Sitemap.xml Validator

Paste a sitemap.xml or sitemap-index and validate against the schema. Reports URL count, malformed dates, priorities outside 0-1, missing required fields, and stale lastmod values.

How to use the Sitemap.xml Validator

Paste your sitemap.xml content. The validator parses the XML, checks each <url> entry, and reports issues. For sitemap-index files (sitemap-of-sitemaps), it reports the index structure and validates each child URL.

What a good sitemap looks like

A sitemap.xml is a list of URLs you want search engines to crawl. The schema is straightforward: <urlset> with one or more <url> children, each containing <loc> (required) and optionally <lastmod>, <changefreq>, <priority>.

Common mistakes: malformed dates (Google wants ISO 8601, not RFC 2822 or Unix timestamps), priorities outside 0.0-1.0, URLs that 404 or redirect (Google deprioritizes), URLs that aren't canonical (they redirect to a different URL — wasted crawl budget), trailing whitespace in loc tags.

One sitemap file maxes out at 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed. Beyond that, use a sitemap index. Submit to Google Search Console + Bing Webmaster Tools after publishing.

Frequently asked questions

What does it validate?
Structure against the sitemap schema, the URL count, malformed lastmod dates, priority values outside 0 to 1, and missing required fields, for both sitemaps and sitemap indexes.

What is the sitemap URL limit?
A single sitemap allows up to 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed. Beyond that, split into multiple sitemaps and reference them from a sitemap index.

Does lastmod affect crawling?
It is a hint. Accurate lastmod dates can help crawlers prioritize changed pages, but inflated or always-now dates are ignored, so keep them honest.
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