XML Sitemap Check
How to keep XML sitemaps valid, canonical, segmented, and limited to pages that should be indexed.
Check your websiteWhy this check matters
Sitemaps give crawlers a clean discovery map. Including redirects, duplicates, errors, or noindex pages sends contradictory signals and wastes crawl attention.
Passing evidence
<url><loc>https://example.com/guides/canonical-tags</loc><lastmod>2026-08-27</lastmod></url>Common failing evidence
<url><loc>https://example.com/private-preview?token=123</loc></url>Possible false positives
- A small site can use one sitemap; segmentation is operational guidance, not a ranking requirement.
- lastmod should be omitted when a trustworthy modification time is unavailable.
How to fix it safely
- Include only successful, canonical, indexable URLs.
- Split large or operationally distinct URL sets into named sitemaps.
- Reference each sitemap from robots.txt or a sitemap index.
How to verify the fix
- Validate the XML and response content type.
- Sample URLs and compare their status, canonical, and robots directives.
Related SEO / AEO / GEO checks
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