Sitemap Inspector

[Nancie Fazzari]

Usethe Sitemaps report to tell Google about any new sitemaps for your property, to see your sitemap submission history, and to see any errors that Google encountered when parsing your submitted sitemaps.

Deleting a sitemap removes the sitemap from this report, but Google won't forget the sitemap or any URLs listed in it. If you want Google to stop visiting the URLs listed in a sitemap you will need to use a robots.txt rule.

If a sitemap fetch or parse fails, Google will continue trying to fetch and process the sitemap for a few days. If the attempts continue to fail, Google will stop trying to crawl that URL. Issues affecting individual URLs within a sitemap won't prevent Google from continuing to read the sitemap, as long as the sitemap can be fetched and read in general.

Different domain: Check that the URLs all begin with the same domain as your sitemap location. For instance, if your sitemap is at , the following URLs are not valid for that sitemap:

Your sitemap is larger than 50MB when uncompressed. If your sitemap is larger than the limit, break it into several smaller sitemaps and list these in a sitemap index file and submit the sitemap index file(s).

You assigned an invalid value to an XML tag attribute. Check your sitemap to make sure that only the allowed attributes are present, and that you assign only allowed values according to the sitemap specifications. Check your attributes and values for typos.

Your sitemap contains one or more invalid dates. This error could be because a date is in the incorrect format, or the date itself is not valid. Dates must use W3C Datetime encoding, although you can omit the time portion. Make sure your dates match one of the following W3C Datetime formats:

A URL in your sitemap is not valid. This error might be because it contains unsupported characters, spaces, or other characters such as quotes, or it might be incorrectly formatted (for example, htp:// instead of ).

Make sure that the URLs listed in your sitemap are encoded for readability and escaped properly. Check for any incorrect characters such as spaces or quotes. You also try copying the URL into a browser to see if the browser can understand the URL and load the page.

Your sitemap index file doesn't include the full URL for each sitemap file that it lists. When we see a sitemap index file, we look in the same directory for the files that it references. For instance, if your sitemap index file is _index.xml and lists a sitemap as sitemap.xml (no / at the beginning), then we'll look for that sitemap at If we can't find it there, you'll see this error.

Often, this problem is caused by an unescaped character in the URL. As with all XML files, any data values (including URLs) must use entity escape codes for certain characters such as & ' " symbols. Be sure that your URLs are properly escaped.

Our system experienced a temporary problem that prevented us from processing your sitemap. Generally, when you receive this error, you do not need to resubmit your sitemap. Google can try to retrieve your sitemap again later. If the error still exists after several hours, try resubmitting your sitemap.

Your sitemap lists more than 50,000 URLs. Split your sitemap into multiple sitemaps and ensure that each contains no more than 50,000 URLs. You can also use a sitemap index file to manage your sitemaps.

Google encountered a 400-level HTTP error when when attempting to download your sitemap. This message displays the status code we received (for example, 404). Make sure that the sitemap URL you specified is correct and that the sitemap exists at that location. Then, resubmit your sitemap.

Google encountered another HTTP error not covered by a more specific error listed here. Expand the details to see what kind of error occurred. This can also be caused by a 404 (page not present) error, which is a fetch error.

The video thumbnail image specified in your sitemap is too large. Resize your video thumbnail image to 160 x 120 px. Update your sitemap with the new information, and then resubmit it. More information about adding video information to a sitemap.

A video thumbnail image specified in your sitemap is too small. Resize your video thumbnail image to 160 x 120 px. Update your sitemap if necessary. More information about adding video information to a sitemap.

Google cannot access your sitemap, or can't access all the content listed in your sitemap, because it is blocked by a robots.txt file. Use the URL Inspection tool to confirm which file is being blocked, and modify your robots.txt file to allow Googlebot to access it.

It's important to note that not all websites have sitemaps, and some may have multiple sitemaps for different sections of the site. If you are unable to find a sitemap for a website, it may be a good idea to contact the website's administrator or developer for more information.

Additionally, sitemaps can be used to inform search engines of specific information about a website's pages, such as the last time they were updated and how often they change. This can help search engines to more effectively crawl and index a site.

When a search engine crawls a website, it will first check for the presence of a sitemap and, if one is found, will use it to guide its crawl of the site. The search engine will then use the information in the sitemap to update its index of the site and to improve the visibility of the site in search engine results.

Sitemaps, as the name implies, are just a map of your site - i.e. on one single page you show the structure of your site, its sections, the links between them, etc. Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines.

Using sitemaps has many benefits, not only easier navigation and better visibility by search engines. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. Of course, you cannot expect that search engines will rush right away to index your changed pages but certainly the changes will be indexed faster, compared to when you don't have a sitemap.Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines. While in robots.txt you tell search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, in your site map you tell search engines where you'd like them to go.

The first step would be to be sure your sitemap is up to date to begin with - and has all the URLs you want (and not any you don't want). The main thing is none of them should 404 and then beyond that, yes, they should return 200's. Unless you're dealing with a gigantic site which might be hard to maintain, in theory there shouldn't be errors in sitemaps if you have the correct URLs in there. Getting sitemaps right on a large site made a huge difference to the crawl rate and a huge indexation to follow.

When it comes to SEO best practices, a sitemap should be optimized to include only indexable and quality content. Any broken (404), redirecting or duplicate page inside it could confuse search engines.

As we discussed above, sitemaps are an irreplaceable and simple way to inform search engines and in particular their crawlers (ex. Googlebot) about the important content on our website.

One of the most common (and simple) ways to locate the XML sitemap of a website is to

manually check a few standard locations. This is dead simple and all you need to do is enter your website URL in the browser and then try with a few different variations. Let me show you:

The idea is that as search engines visit these robots.txt files, adding a link to the sitemap there, makes perfect sense. That way, it will be easier for them to detect the sitemap in the first place and crawl the website.

Google Search Console (also known as Webmaster Tools in the past) is one more place to find the path we are looking for. Of course, for this to be possible, you have to be an owner of the website or to have been granted access.

Along with the sitemap exact URL address, there is additional information like the type of sitemap (index files containing other sitemaps in them or regular sitemaps with the pages of the website), when it was submitted, last read, status and how many URLs are inside.

Still with us? Okay, that means you are either still looking for that precious sitemap file location, or you are very brave to enter the advanced section. In both cases, I want to congratulate you for reaching so far and wish you luck ?

Google search operators (also known as commands) could be very powerful for various SEO goals (ex. finding link building opportunities, content ideas, discovering technical issues, and more). However, in this case, we will use them to find the XML sitemap of the website we are examining.

TIP: These commands will reveal the location of the sitemap only if it is indexed by Google. Some WP plugins that create sitemaps automatically add the no follow, no index tag to Sitemaps. So, if you end up with no results found, do not worry!

Another technique is to try with an online tool like SEO Site Checkup where you only need to paste your website URL and hit Checkup. Then you will get something like this:Note: The way this tool works is by checking the standard sitemap locations we mentioned earlier (sitemap.xml, sitemap1.xml, sitemapindex.xml and so on). Therefore, it may not find your website in other specific cases.

Depending on the content management system the site is running on, XML sitemaps might be located at different places. The good news is that the most popular CMSes have default locations that you may want to start your search from.

A sitemap.xml file is like a map for search engines. It tells them where all the pages on your website are located and when they were last updated. This helps search engines find and index your pages faster, which can improve your website's visibility in search results. It's like giving directions to a friend so they don't get lost!

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