Sitemap XML

What XML sitemaps are, how sitemap indexes work, and the common issues this audit flags: stale URLs, 404s, and bloated inventories.

What sitemaps are

An XML sitemap is a machine-readable list of a site's URLs, published (usually at /sitemap.xml) so search engines can discover and prioritize pages for crawling. Each entry can carry a last-modified date, change frequency hint, and priority. Large sites split the inventory across a sitemap index — a sitemap of sitemaps — which the audit expands recursively.

How the audit uses them

In Sitemaps only mode the sitemap inventory is the audit scope: every URL listed gets fetched, status-checked, and beacon-scanned. In Sitemaps + link crawl mode the crawler additionally follows internal links breadth-first to find pages the sitemap missed. Either way, the sitemap is the starting point — which is why sitemap hygiene matters so much.

Common issues the audit flags

• Stale 404 URLs — the most common finding: pages long deleted but never removed from the sitemap. The report's pages table shows them as sitemap-listed URLs returning 404.
• Redirect chains in the sitemap — sitemaps should list canonical final URLs; entries that 301 elsewhere waste crawl budget.
• Missing pages — important pages (new launches, campaign landing pages) absent from the sitemap entirely. The link-crawl mode surfaces these by comparing crawled URLs against the sitemap list.
• Bloated inventories — tag pages, thin archives, and duplicate content inflating the sitemap into the tens of thousands of URLs, diluting crawl attention on the pages that matter.
• Wrong lastmod dates — every URL stamped with today's date (or never updated) teaches crawlers to ignore the signal.

What the audit doesn't check

The audit inventories and fetches sitemap URLs; it doesn't validate XML schema pedantry or submit anything to search engines. For submission status and indexation coverage, pair the audit with Google Search Console — the audit tells you what the sitemap claims, Search Console tells you what Google did with it.