An XML sitemap is a list of your site's URLs that helps search engines discover pages, especially on a large or poorly-linked site. It should exist at a predictable URL, return a 200 response, and be referenced from robots.txt.
Why it matters
Google can discover pages by following links without a sitemap, but a sitemap makes discovery faster and more reliable, particularly for pages with few internal links pointing at them, or a site that changes often.
A sitemap also gives you a single place to check, in Google Search Console, whether Google has actually indexed the pages you expect it to.
How AuditCrow checks this
AuditCrow looks for `/sitemap.xml` (and checks whether robots.txt references a sitemap at a different path), confirms it returns a successful response, and checks it parses as valid XML with a sensible set of URLs.
How to fix it
- 1Confirm `yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml` loads and lists real page URLs, not template placeholders or a login page.
- 2Reference the sitemap from robots.txt with a `Sitemap:` line, so crawlers that check robots.txt first can find it automatically.
- 3Submit the sitemap URL in Google Search Console (Sitemaps, in the left-hand menu) so you can see how many submitted URLs are actually indexed.
- 4In WordPress, most SEO plugins generate a sitemap automatically at `/sitemap.xml` or `/sitemap_index.xml`. If neither loads, the plugin's sitemap feature is likely disabled in its settings.
- 5Keep the sitemap current. A sitemap listing pages that no longer exist, or missing pages added since it was generated, is a lower-priority version of this same problem (a separate check, C4, looks at sitemap cleanliness).
Related terms
Related checks
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