Sitemap present and valid
What the check finds
No sitemap.xml was found. Crawlers must then discover every page by following links, which reliably misses pages that are linked from few places.
sitemap.xml exists but is malformed, so a crawler cannot read it. The effect is the same as having no sitemap.
Why it matters for AI answers
A sitemap lists the pages a site wants crawled. Without a readable one, search engines and AI crawlers find pages only through links, and poorly linked pages get missed.
How to fix it
- Publish a valid XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml listing only indexable URLs that return 200.
- Add a Sitemap: line with the full sitemap URL to robots.txt.
- Validate the XML and keep it under 50,000 URLs or 50 MB per file, using a sitemap index if larger.
- Submit the sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Related checks
Review this finding in context: Indexability and crawlability guide ›
Still stuck? Contact support ›