XML sitemapWhat it checks and how to fix it

What it checks

Fetches /sitemap.xml and, if that is not found, the first Sitemap: URL in robots.txt. It passes when a valid XML sitemap or sitemap index is found, and fails when the sitemap has XML errors or the wrong root element, exceeds the protocol's size limits, or cannot be found in either place.

Why it matters

The XML sitemap is how you tell search engines which URLs exist and when they changed. Without one, discovery depends on internal links alone, so new, deep or poorly linked pages are found late or never. A broken sitemap is worse than none: crawlers stop trusting it.

How to fix it

Publish a sitemap at /sitemap.xml listing the canonical URL of every page you want indexed, and reference it from robots.txt:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-10-01</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/pricing</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

A single sitemap may hold at most 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed; beyond that, split it and list the parts in a sitemap index. In Rails, the sitemap_generator gem builds it from your routes and models; most CMSs (WordPress, Shopify, Webflow) generate one automatically. Submit the URL in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.