Sitemap Checker
Fetch and analyze any XML sitemap. View all URLs, validate structure, and check lastmod dates.
Enter any domain or sitemap URL to fetch and analyze its XML sitemap. Supports both standard URL sets and sitemap index files. Domains are automatically resolved to /sitemap.xml.
How to check an XML sitemap
Enter the sitemap URL to see every page it lists, with lastmod dates and a summary.
- 01
Enter the sitemap's URL
Usually /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml. If you're not sure, open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for a Sitemap: line.
- 02
Read the summary and the URL list
You'll see how many URLs the file lists, the spread of changefreq values and the range of lastmod dates. URLs are shown 20 to a page, with a filter box to find a specific one.
- 03
For a sitemap index, load each child sitemap
An index file lists other sitemaps rather than pages. Each child has a Load button; press it to fetch and check that file.
- 04
Copy the URLs if you need them elsewhere
Copy all puts every URL on your clipboard, one per line, ready for a spreadsheet or a crawler.
Which sitemap fields search engines actually use
The sitemap protocol allows four fields per URL. The tool reads all of them, but they don't carry equal weight.
| Field | What it means | Does Google use it? |
|---|---|---|
| <loc> | The page's full URL | Yes, the only thing Google requires |
| <lastmod> | When the page last changed meaningfully | Yes, if it's accurate |
| <changefreq> | How often the page is expected to change | No, Google ignores it |
| <priority> | Relative importance, 0.0 to 1.0 | No, Google ignores it |
Google has said it ignores changefreq and priority, and uses lastmod only when it's consistently accurate. A sitemap that stamps every URL with today's date on every build teaches Google to ignore your lastmod. If the date range in the summary shows every page modified in the last day, that's worth fixing at the source.
What a healthy sitemap looks like
A sitemap should list the canonical, indexable version of every page you want in search, and nothing else. That means no URLs that redirect, no pages with a noindex tag, no 404s and no parameter variations such as ?sort=price. Each of those wastes a crawler's time and makes the sitemap less trustworthy as a signal.
Size limits are generous: a single sitemap file can hold up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Larger sites split into several files and list them in a sitemap index. If your index has child files with very uneven counts, such as one with 49,000 URLs and another with 12, that's often a sign a plugin is splitting by date rather than by section.
When to check a sitemap
Checking a sitemap after launch
Confirm the file loads, lists the URLs you expect and uses the live domain, not a staging one.
Investigating pages missing from Google
Filter for the page's path. If it's not in the sitemap, that's one reason Google may be slow to find it.
Auditing after a migration
Look for old-domain URLs, http:// addresses or redirected paths that should have been replaced.
Limits worth knowing
- It parses the file; it doesn't visit the URLs. Redirects, 404s and noindex pages listed in the sitemap aren't flagged. Spot-check a few with the Redirect Checker.
- Compressed .xml.gz files are only read if the server sends them with gzip content encoding. A raw .gz download won't parse.
- Child sitemaps in an index are loaded one at a time, not all at once.
- Our server waits up to 10 seconds for the file. Very large or slow sitemaps may time out.