Sitemap.xml exists

high

sitemap_exists

Checks if a sitemap.xml file exists.

What does this rule check?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists all important URLs on your website. It helps search engines discover and crawl your content more efficiently, especially for large sites or sites with pages not well-linked internally.

Why is this important?

Without a sitemap, search engines rely solely on crawling links to discover pages. This means orphan pages (with no incoming links) may never be found and indexed.

How to fix

Create a sitemap.xml file at the root of your domain and submit it to Google Search Console.

Examples

Incorrect 
<!-- /sitemap.xml returns 404 -->
Correct 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-01-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Agent fix snippet

Copy this snippet and paste it into your AI coding agent to fix this issue automatically.

Create a sitemap.xml at the root of your domain. For frameworks:
- Next.js: use next-sitemap package
- Astro: use @astrojs/sitemap
- Manual: create an XML file listing all URLs