Can crawlers discover all your pages?
Enter a domain. We find the sitemap your site declares, read it, and report what would stop a crawler discovering your pages.
You do not need to know your sitemap url. We read your robots.txt to find it.
Anyone who has published pages and waited.
A sitemap is the discovery map every crawler reads first. When it is broken, outdated or listing somebody else’s domain, your newest pages are not being ignored. They are not being found.
The failures are quiet. The file still downloads, the site still works, Search Console may say nothing useful, and the only symptom is that pages you published weeks ago still are not indexed.
Six things, in the order they break.
Does it parse at all
The commonest failure. A sitemap with one unclosed tag is not partly read. It is discarded. We also catch an HTML page served in place of a sitemap, which is what a 404 page returned with a 200 status looks like.
Is it really yours
A sitemap listing another company’s domain is usually one copied from a template site, or left behind by a migration. We show you the first entries so you can see at a glance.
Protocol limits
50,000 urls and 50MB per file. Over either, the file is rejected rather than partly read, and the fix is a sitemap index.
Entries that cannot be used
A <url> with no <loc>, a relative path a crawler will not resolve, the same url listed twice, and http mixed in with https, which crawlers treat as different pages.
Freshness signals
Malformed dates, dates in the future, and the one almost every site has: every single url stamped with the same lastmod.
Where it is declared
We look in your robots.txt first and tell you which route we took. If robots.txt names a sitemap that is not there, that is its own finding.
Every page claiming it changed today.
lastmod is how you tell a crawler what changed. Used properly it is the most valuable field in the file: it is the reason a crawler comes back to one page before another.
Many sitemap generators stamp every url with the date the file was written. So every page claims it changed today, and tomorrow every page claims it changed tomorrow. The signal carries no information, and a crawler that checks a few of those claims and finds them false has reason to discount all of them.
A missing lastmod is better than a false one. No date means the crawler decides for itself. A date that is always today is a claim it can test and find untrue.
The honest limits.
Whether each url actually loads
We do not fetch every page in your sitemap. A sitemap full of 404s parses perfectly, and finding that needs a crawl rather than a check.
Whether those pages should be indexed
A url can be listed, reachable, and still carry a noindex tag. The sitemap and the page can disagree, and only the page knows.
Whether a crawler can reach them
robots.txt or a firewall can block what the sitemap advertises. Our robots.txt checker answers that half.
Whether the pages are worth listing
Tag archives, author pages and parameter urls parse fine and waste crawl budget. Deciding which belong is a judgement about your site, not a protocol check.
Five moments worth the ten seconds.
After a migration
The single highest-yield moment. A sitemap left pointing at the old domain parses perfectly and is completely useless.
After launching a batch of pages
Confirm the new urls are actually in the file before waiting weeks to find out they were not.
When Search Console reports sitemap errors
It tells you there is a problem. It is thin on which line caused it.
When new pages are not being indexed
Discovery is the first thing to rule out, and it is the cheapest.
After changing CMS or plugins
Sitemap generation usually moves with them, and the new one rarely matches the old.
Most of them check that the file parses.
An XML validator answers a question about syntax. A perfectly valid sitemap can list the wrong domain, repeat itself, and claim every page changed this morning.
Search Console tells you there is a problem. It is thin on which line caused it, and it only works for sites you already own and have verified.
This one starts from your robots.txt, so you do not need to know your sitemap url. And if robots.txt points at a sitemap that is not there, you find out, which is a failure that sends every crawler to a dead address and that nothing else reports.
Discovery is the floor. Being named is the job.
A sitemap gets your pages found. It does nothing about whether an assistant names your business when a customer asks who to hire. That depends on the pages answering a real question, and on the facts about your business being consistent enough for an engine to repeat.
We publish how we test that, including the answers where we are not named, on our methodology page. Prices are on the pricing page.
What owners ask about this.
Do I need to know my sitemap url?
No. Enter your domain and we read your robots.txt to find the address your site declares. If it does not declare one, we try the conventional /sitemap.xml. The result tells you which route we took.
What is a sitemap index?
A sitemap of sitemaps, used when a site has more than 50,000 urls or wants to group them. If you give us one, we report it as an index and list the child sitemaps rather than pretending it holds pages.
Why does it matter that every page has the same lastmod?
Because lastmod is how you tell a crawler what changed. If every url claims the same date, the signal carries no information, and a crawler has no reason to prioritise your new page over a page from three years ago. It is usually a generator writing today's date on everything.
Is a missing lastmod worse than a wrong one?
A wrong one is worse. No lastmod means a crawler decides for itself. A lastmod that is always today, or set in the future, is a claim it can check and find false, after which it has reason to discount all of them.
My sitemap is fine but my pages are not indexed. Why?
A sitemap is a suggestion, not an instruction. It helps a crawler discover pages; it does not oblige anyone to index them. If discovery is not the problem, the next things to check are crawler access and whether the page answers a question anyone is asking.
Does AI search use sitemaps?
Indirectly, and that is the honest answer. The assistants that answer from a search index inherit whatever that index discovered, and discovery is what a sitemap affects. The crawlers that fetch a single page in response to a question do not consult your sitemap at all.
Do you store the sitemaps you read?
No. The check runs, the result goes to your browser, and nothing is kept. There is no sign-up and no email field on this page.
Can I check a competitor's sitemap?
Yes. A sitemap is a public file, and it is often the fastest way to see every page a competitor has published, including the ones they have not linked to from anywhere.
Related: Robots.txt checker · Which AI crawlers can see my site · How we test AI answers · AI visibility service
By Steven Allbright, founder, Ultimate Elite Solutions · Last updated: 2026-10-08
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