How to fix XML sitemap errors
A sitemap is a claim about your site. This is how to make the claim true.
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A sitemap tells a search engine which URLs you consider worth crawling. It does not force indexing, and it will not rescue a page nothing links to — but a broken or dishonest sitemap makes discovery slower on exactly the sites that need it most.
Here is how to check yours and fix the four problems that cover almost every case.
What usually causes it
The sitemap lists URLs that redirect or 404
Generated once and never regenerated, it becomes a list of what the site used to be. Every stale URL is a wasted crawl and a signal that the file is not maintained.
Noindexed or canonicalised-away URLs in the file
Listing a URL says "crawl and index this"; the page then says the opposite. Contradictory signals are resolved by the search engine, not by you.
It isn't actually XML
A sitemap URL that returns an HTML error page, or a plugin's dashboard, parses as nothing. It looks fine in a browser and is invisible to a crawler.
Nothing points at it
Not declared in robots.txt, not submitted in Search Console. It exists and nothing knows to look for it.
How to fix it
Find and validate the one you have
The sitemap checker above looks in robots.txt and the usual locations, confirms the response is really XML, follows a sitemap index down a level, and counts what is listed.
List only canonical, indexable URLs
No redirects, no 404s, no noindexed pages, no URLs that canonicalise elsewhere. If it is in the sitemap, it should be a page you want in the index exactly as it is.
Regenerate it automatically
A sitemap maintained by hand is a sitemap that is wrong. Every platform can generate one; in Next.js that is app/sitemap.ts querying the same source the routes come from.
Declare it and submit it
Add a Sitemap: line to robots.txt and submit the URL in Search Console. The coverage report that follows is the most useful free diagnostic there is.
Compare it with a real crawl
The interesting question is not what the sitemap lists but what it leaves out — pages a crawl finds that the sitemap has never heard of.
What the audit checks
- Whether a sitemap exists, parses, and is declared in robots.txt
- URLs listed that redirect, 404 or are noindexed
- URLs on another host, or over http
- Pages a crawl finds that the sitemap does not list
Check part of it right now, free
These read a live page and tell you what a search engine sees. No signup, no email.
XML sitemap checker
Find your sitemap, prove it parses, and see what it is actually telling Google.
robots.txt checker
One file, read carefully — because the expensive mistakes all live in it.
The issues behind this
Each has a full entry in the issue library: what it is, what it costs a business, and step-by-step fixes for WordPress, Shopify, Webflow and custom builds.
Missing XML sitemap
No sitemap to tell search engines what exists.
4xx pages
Pages returning a not-found or forbidden status code.
Noindex on an important page
A page tells search engines to hide it from results.
Questions
Related
robots.txt errors
Four lines of text that can remove a whole website from search.
Broken links
Check the page now, then find the rest — they are mostly in old content.
Crawl the site and compare what exists against what the sitemap claims
The free audit crawls the site, groups every finding, and returns the five things worth fixing this month in plain English. No card, no call.
Run a free audit