Sitemap Validator
Validate a sitemap for XML errors, bad lastmod dates, relative URLs, duplicates and the limits search engines enforce.
Check a sitemap for XML errors, bad dates, duplicates, relative URLs and the limits search engines enforce.
Validation
Entries
0
Errors
0
Warnings
0
No problems found.
A sitemap helps pages get found; it does not make them rank. Only list pages you want indexed. Including a URL that is noindex, redirected or canonical to somewhere else sends contradictory signals.
Generating...About the sitemap validator
A sitemap with one bad entry is often rejected in full, and Search Console reports it days later in language that does not say which line. Most causes are mechanical: an unescaped ampersand, a date in the wrong format, a relative URL, or a priority outside zero to one.
This checks all of them at once, including the ones that pass validation but still waste crawl budget, such as listing http URLs or mixing hosts in a single file.
How to use it
- 1Paste your sitemap XML.
- 2Fix errors first, then warnings.
- 3Confirm every URL is absolute and on the same host.
- 4Submit the corrected file in Search Console.
Questions
Why was my sitemap rejected?
Most often an unescaped ampersand in a URL, which has to be written as an entity. A single one invalidates the whole XML document.
What format must lastmod use?
W3C datetime, so a plain date or a full timestamp with a time zone. Day first formats are rejected.
How many URLs can one sitemap hold?
50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, whichever comes first. Past that, split into several files and reference them from a sitemap index.
Do priority and changefreq matter?
Very little. Google has said it ignores them. They are still validated here because an out of range value can invalidate the file.
Can one sitemap cover several domains?
No. A sitemap may only list URLs at or below its own location, so mixing hosts means most entries are ignored.