A sitemap fails in four different ways
I submitted a sitemap but pages still are not being discovered. Is the file itself wrong?
Which checks surface this
- no-sitemap — no sitemap could be found at all
- sitemap-invalid — the file exists but is not valid sitemap XML
- sitemap-bad-urls — entries that return a client or server error
- sitemap-redirects — entries that redirect instead of resolving directly
- sitemap-coverage — pages that should be listed but are not
Check ids: no-sitemap · sitemap-invalid · sitemap-bad-urls · sitemap-redirects · sitemap-coverage
A concrete example
Listing the same page twice, once with a trailing slash and once without, produces a duplicate entry and a redirect entry in the same file.
FAQ
- Do I need a sitemap if my site is linked well?
- It is still useful for discovery, but it is not a substitute for internal links. A page that only exists in the sitemap is an orphan page.
- Which of the four should I fix first?
- Availability and validity first — until the file can be read, the other three cannot be evaluated.