Sitemap Checker

Sitemap Checker is a free online tool that validates your XML sitemap in seconds. Enter your sitemap URL, click “Check,” and get your sitemap validation results instantly no setup or sign-up required.

An XML sitemap is a file that lists your site’s pages for search engines, helping bots discover new and deeply buried URLs faster. XML is the most common format; the sitemaps.org protocol also accepts RSS/Atom feeds and plain text lists.

What is a news sitemap?

A news sitemap is a special XML sitemap built for Google News. You can either add news tags to your existing sitemap or create a separate file containing only articles.

The first difference from a standard sitemap is that it declares Google’s news namespace on the root <urlset> element and carries these news:-prefixed fields for every article:

  1. <news:name> the publication name, written exactly as it appears on Google News.
  2. <news:language> the ISO 639 language code; en for English content.
  3. <news:publication_date> the article’s original publication date in W3C Datetime format.
  4. <news:title> the headline only, with no author, publication name, or date.

The second difference is operational. Only articles published in the last two days belong in the file; once a URL passes 48 hours you remove it or strip just its <news:news> block. A news sitemap can hold at most 1,000 URLs, so larger sets are split across several files. And rather than generating a new file for each article, you keep updating the same one.

If you aren’t a news publisher you don’t need a news sitemap; a standard XML sitemap is enough.

The tool fetches the file at the URL you provide and validates it against the sitemaps.org standard. It supports a single file (urlset), an index file (sitemapindex), and gzip-compressed (.xml.gz) files:

  1. It checks whether the file is valid XML and detects its type.
  2. It reports the URL count, structure, and any limit overruns.
  3. It tests the sitemap’s accessibility (200, 404, redirect, server error).
  4. It checks whether the sitemap is correctly declared in robots.txt; you can test the full file with Robots.txt Checker.

File structure

  • The file must be a valid XML document encoded in UTF-8.
  • The root element must be <urlset> or <sitemapindex>, declared with the correct namespace.
  • Every entry requires a <loc> tag; addresses must be absolute URLs including the protocol and under 2,048 characters.
  • The characters &, ‘, “, <, and > must be encoded as XML entities & becomes &amp;.

lastmod, changefreq, and priority

  • <lastmod> uses the W3C Datetime format (2026-08-11 or 2026-08-11T14:30:00+03:00). Google uses it only if it is consistently and verifiably accurate.
  • <changefreq> and <priority> are valid under the protocol, but Google ignores both entirely. They aren’t worth your time.

Limits and scope

  • A file can contain at most 50,000 URLs and cannot exceed 50 MB uncompressed; the same limits apply to an index file.
  • A sitemap index cannot reference another index; nested indexing is not supported.
  • By default, URLs must belong to the same host as the directory hosting the file (or a subdirectory of it). Google allows sitemaps spanning multiple domains when ownership is verified each site’s robots.txt must then reference only its own sitemap.
  • The location should be declared in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line.

A properly configured sitemap helps search engines crawl your site faster and more completely: fewer fixes in Search Console, faster indexing of new pages, and fewer losses after a domain change or CMS migration. You catch problems before submitting a faulty file to Google, spot syntax errors in hand-edited XML, and confirm you’re within the 50,000 URL limit.

  1. Paste your sitemap URL into the input field.
  2. Click the “Check” button.
  3. Review the errors and warnings in the report.
  4. Fix the issues and re-test.
  5. Submit the file through Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Always write <loc> URLs as full HTTPS addresses, split large sitemaps into multiple files combined with a sitemapindex, and re-test after every major deployment. Try Sitemap Checker free now.