XML Sitemap Validator
Check your XML sitemap for errors, validate against schema, and ensure it follows best practices for search engine optimization.
Validate Your XML Sitemap
About XML Sitemaps
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the important pages on your website to ensure that search engines can find and crawl them. It also provides valuable metadata about each page such as when it was last updated, how often it changes, and its relative importance.
Note: This tool validates your sitemap against the official sitemap protocol and checks for common issues that might prevent search engines from properly indexing your content.
How to Use the XML Sitemap Validator
- Enter your sitemap URL, upload a sitemap file, or paste your XML content.
- Select the validation options you want to include.
- Click "Validate Sitemap" to start the analysis.
- View the comprehensive report with validation results, issues, and URL details.
- Use the export option to save the results for further reference.
Understanding XML Sitemaps
What is an XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that provides information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. A sitemap tells Google which pages and files you think are important in your site, and also provides valuable information about these files: for example, when the page was last updated, how often it changes, and any alternate language versions of a page.
Why XML Sitemaps Matter
Improved Crawling
Sitemaps help search engines discover and crawl all the important pages on your website, especially if your site is new, large, or has pages that aren't well linked.
Better Indexing
Sitemaps help search engines understand which pages are most important on your site and how frequently they're updated, which can lead to better indexing.
International SEO
For sites with multiple language versions, sitemaps can specify which pages are alternates of each other, helping search engines serve the right content to users in different regions.
Rich Results
Specialized sitemaps (like video, image, or news sitemaps) can help your content appear in rich search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.
XML Sitemap Structure
A basic XML sitemap follows this structure:
Key Elements:
- <urlset> - The root element that encapsulates the file and references the current protocol standard.
- <url> - Parent tag for each URL entry. Each URL entry must contain a <loc> tag.
- <loc> - The URL of the page. This URL must begin with the protocol (such as http) and end with a trailing slash if your web server requires it.
- <lastmod> - The date of last modification of the file, in W3C Datetime format.
- <changefreq> - How frequently the page is likely to change. Valid values: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never.
- <priority> - The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site. Valid values range from 0.0 to 1.0.
Types of XML Sitemaps
- Standard XML Sitemap - Lists web pages on your site
- Image Sitemap - Provides information about images on your site
- Video Sitemap - Provides information about videos on your site
- News Sitemap - Specifically for news content
- Mobile Sitemap - For mobile-specific content
- Sitemap Index - For sites with multiple sitemaps
- Alternate Language Sitemap - For multilingual sites
- Dynamic Sitemap - Generated automatically from your content
Sitemap Best Practices
Content Guidelines
- Include all important pages that should be indexed
- Limit to 50,000 URLs per sitemap
- Keep sitemap size under 50MB
- Use sitemap index for larger sites
- Include only canonical URLs
- Exclude noindex pages and redirects
Technical Guidelines
- Use UTF-8 encoding
- Include the XML declaration
- Use absolute URLs with https:// protocol
- Keep lastmod dates accurate and in W3C format
- Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console
- Reference your sitemap in robots.txt