XML Sitemap Validator
Paste a sitemap or sitemap index URL. The validator reads every nested file and reports what a search engine would trip over.
Reads up to 5,000 URLs across 25 sitemap files. Gzipped sitemaps are supported.
What the validator checks
The tool downloads your sitemap the same way a crawler does, follows a sitemap index into its child files and then checks the things that make search engines reject or ignore sitemap entries.
- Format. It detects whether the file is a
<urlset>, a<sitemapindex>, a plain text list or an RSS/Atom feed, and whether the XML is well formed. One unclosed tag or an unescaped&in a URL makes the whole file unreadable. - Every file in the index. The table shows the URL count per file and the error for files that return 404, time out or fail to parse.
- Limits. 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed per file. Files over the limit are not processed.
- URL quality. Relative URLs, malformed URLs, duplicates and URLs on a different host than the sitemap.
- lastmod. The share of URLs with a valid date, plus the newest and oldest value. Dates in the future are flagged.
How to fix the common errors
A child sitemap returns an error
Open the file URL in a browser. A 404 usually means the index was generated once and the child files were later renamed or removed. Regenerate the index, or use the sitemap generator to build a clean file from a URL list.
URLs on the wrong host
The usual cause is a mix of www and non-www, or http entries on an https site. List the canonical version of each URL only. If the sitemap URL redirects, the final address counts as the host.
Missing or useless lastmod
Set lastmod to the date the main content last changed, in W3C format such as 2026-03-05. Do not stamp every URL with the time the sitemap was built.
After the sitemap is clean
Reference it from robots.txt with a Sitemap: line and submit it in Search Console. You can confirm that crawlers can find it with the sitemap finder, and export the full URL list with the sitemap URL extractor. A listed URL can still be blocked, so spot check a few pages with the indexability checker.
TurboIndex reads your sitemaps every day, submits new URLs and tracks which ones Google has indexed.
Questions and answers
What are the size limits for a sitemap?
One sitemap file may hold up to 50,000 URLs and be up to 50MB uncompressed. If you need more, split the URLs over several files and list those files in a sitemap index. An index can reference up to 50,000 sitemaps.
Does a valid sitemap mean my pages will be indexed?
No. A sitemap helps search engines discover URLs. Each page still has to be crawlable, return 200, carry no noindex and be worth indexing. A valid sitemap removes one possible cause of trouble, nothing more.
Do I need lastmod, changefreq and priority?
Google ignores changefreq and priority. It does use lastmod when the value is consistently accurate, meaning it reflects a real change to the page. A lastmod that updates every day on unchanged pages gets ignored.
Why does the tool flag URLs on a different host?
A sitemap should list URLs from the host it lives on. https://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml cannot vouch for URLs on https://shop.yoursite.com unless both sites are verified in the same Search Console account or the sitemap is referenced from the other host's robots.txt.
Can I validate a gzipped sitemap?
Yes. Paste the .xml.gz URL. The file is decompressed before it is checked, and the size shown is the uncompressed size, which is the one the 50MB limit applies to.