XML Sitemaps Explained

An XML sitemap is a file, usually at example.com/sitemap.xml, that lists the pages on your site you want search engines to find. It helps crawlers discover pages, especially new pages and pages that few other pages link to.

How Much Does It Matter?

A sitemap is a hint, not an instruction. Search engines can find pages without one by following links, and listing a page does not make them crawl, index or rank it. It matters most for large sites, new sites with few links from elsewhere, and pages buried deep in the site. For a small site with good internal links it is a cheap, sensible extra rather than a fix that changes everything.

How the Report Finds It

The free check looks for a sitemap in the places search engines look:

A Sitemap line in your robots.txt - the most reliable way to tell every search engine where it is
The usual address at the root of your site, /sitemap.xml

If neither gives us a real sitemap, the check is marked Fix. Many sites answer every unknown address with a normal web page; we only count a real XML file - a list of pages or a sitemap index.

The extensive audit also compares your sitemap with the pages it crawls, and flags sitemap entries that redirect and pages it found that are missing from the sitemap.

What to Put in It

Only the canonical address of each page you want in search results - not redirects, error pages, pages marked noindex or duplicates
Full addresses, including https:// and your preferred www or non-www version
A lastmod date only when the page itself meaningfully changed, not every time the sitemap is rebuilt
For a large site, several sitemaps listed in a sitemap index file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-10-01</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/delivery</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Most website builders and content management systems create a sitemap for you; check yours before writing one by hand.

Tell Search Engines About It

1 Add a line like "Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml" to your robots.txt
2 Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
3 Check their sitemap reports for addresses they could not read

Let the Extensive Audit Write It

The extensive audit builds an XML sitemap from the pages it crawls, ready for you to check and publish. It only knows the pages it crawled - up to 20 - so add any others you want listed.

Sources

Google’s sitemap overview and how to build a sitemap explain the format and its limits. The sitemaps.org protocol is the shared standard Google, Bing and other engines support.