How to check and fix an XML sitemap
What the sitemap health checker tests
Enter a sitemap URL directly or provide a website URL. For a website, Mydentify reads robots.txt for a declared sitemap and otherwise tries the conventional /sitemap.xml path. It recognizes URL sitemaps and sitemap index files.
The structural scan checks fully qualified HTTP URLs, duplicate locations, parseable lastmod dates, entry counts, and uncompressed size. A sitemap index is reported separately and up to three child files are sampled so the result stays bounded.
- A single sitemap file can contain no more than 50,000 URLs or exceed 50 MB uncompressed.
- URLs should be fully qualified rather than relative paths.
- A sitemap index points to child sitemap files; its entry count is not a page count.
- Compressed .xml.gz files are not supported by this initial bounded checker.
A valid sitemap does not guarantee indexing
A sitemap tells search engines which canonical URLs you prefer them to discover. It does not force crawling or indexing, and it does not prove that a page returns 200, allows crawling, declares a matching canonical, or contains useful content.
Use Search Console URL Inspection and indexing reports for Google's observed state. Check server responses, robots rules, canonical tags, and internal links separately when an important URL is missing from search.
Sitemap practices worth checking
Include canonical URLs you want to appear in search, keep generated files current, and use meaningful lastmod values only when a page changed substantially. Do not update every timestamp automatically when the underlying content did not change.
Large sites should split files cleanly and use a sitemap index. The checker caps each fetched file at 5 MB for public safety even though the protocol permits larger files, so extremely large valid sitemaps need a dedicated crawler or Search Console review.