🗺️ XML Sitemap Checker & Validator

Validate your XML sitemaps against Google's guidelines. Check format, URL count, size limits, and common errors. Enter a URL or paste XML directly.

Check Sitemap

Enter the full URL to your sitemap or sitemap index file.

About the XML Sitemap Checker

Sitemaps help search engines discover and crawl your pages. A broken or invalid sitemap can prevent Google from indexing your content. This tool validates your sitemap against XML standards and Google's guidelines.

Google Sitemap Requirements

  • Valid XML — Must be well-formed XML with proper encoding
  • Max 50,000 URLs — Per sitemap file (use sitemap index for more)
  • Max 50 MB — Uncompressed file size
  • Absolute URLs — All <loc> values must be fully qualified (https://...)
  • Valid dates — Use W3C Datetime format for lastmod (YYYY-MM-DD)

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the sitemap checker validate?
It checks: valid XML syntax, sitemap vs sitemap index detection, total URL count, missing <loc> elements, invalid lastmod dates, non-absolute URLs, if the sitemap exceeds 50,000 URLs or 50MB, and more.
What's the difference between a sitemap and a sitemap index?
A standard sitemap contains <url> entries (up to 50,000). A sitemap index contains <sitemap> entries pointing to other sitemaps. Sitemap indexes allow you to split large sites across multiple sitemap files.
What are the Google sitemap limits?
Each sitemap file must have at most 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 50MB uncompressed. If your site exceeds these, use a sitemap index file pointing to multiple sitemaps.