sitemap.xml is an XML file that lists URLs on a website for search engines and other crawlers. It does not guarantee indexing, but it gives crawlers a clearer path to public URLs, update signals, and the shape of the site.
A machine-readable URL list
Navigation menus and article lists are written for people. A sitemap is written for crawlers. It is especially useful for large sites, frequently updated sites, and pages that are hard to discover only through internal links.
urlset and sitemapindex
Small sites often use a urlset that lists page URLs directly. Larger sites may use a sitemapindex that points to multiple sitemap files. CMSs often split sitemaps by posts, pages, images, or other content types.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/articles/example</loc>
<lastmod>2026-05-08</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>What to check
- The sitemap can be fetched from a public URL
- The XML is valid enough to parse
- loc values match canonical URLs
- HTTPS sites do not list HTTP URLs by mistake
- Old or 404 URLs are not left behind
- lastmod is not mechanically identical on every URL
The TOOLPOOL Sitemap Checker can start from a site URL or a sitemap URL, discover sitemap files, count URL entries, inspect lastmod values, and check whether robots.txt points to the sitemap.