How many URLs can a sitemap contain?

50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, whichever comes first. Beyond that, split into multiple sitemaps and reference them from a sitemap index file — which itself can list up to 50,000 sitemaps.

Does a sitemap guarantee indexing?

No. A sitemap is a discovery aid: it tells Google which URLs exist and where. Whether they get indexed depends on crawlability, content quality and duplication. Pages in a sitemap that stay unindexed usually have a quality or duplication problem, not a discovery one.

Should I include noindexed pages in my sitemap?

No. A sitemap should list only canonical, indexable URLs that return 200. Including noindexed, redirected or canonicalised-away URLs sends conflicting signals and wastes crawl budget on pages you do not want ranked.

Do I need lastmod, changefreq and priority?

Only lastmod carries real weight, and only when it is accurate. Google has said it ignores changefreq and priority entirely. An accurate lastmod helps large sites get changed pages recrawled sooner; a fake one gets the field discounted.

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XML Sitemap Validator

Catch structural errors, invalid URLs, and missing metadata in your sitemap before Google does.

Sitemap XML

Errors found

Could not identify sitemap type.

• XML parse error: DOMParser is not defined

In short

Validating a sitemap means checking it against the sitemaps.org protocol: well-formed XML, a correct urlset or sitemapindex namespace, absolute URLs on the same host, W3C-format lastmod dates, and no more than 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed per file. A sitemap that fails any of these is rejected wholesale, not partially — one malformed entry can cost you the entire file.

Worked example

What the output looks like

Input: <url><loc>/blog/seo-audit</loc><lastmod>08/05/2026</lastmod><priority>1.5</priority></url>
Output: 3 errors — <loc> is relative, not absolute; <lastmod> is not W3C date format; <priority> exceeds the 0.0–1.0 range
How to read it: All three are silent failures in a browser but rejected by Google. The fix is an absolute https URL, a 2026-08-05 date, and a priority of 1.0 — though priority is effectively ignored by Google and can simply be dropped.

How it works

Paste the raw XML

Use view-source on yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and copy the whole document, including the XML declaration and namespace attribute.

Check the URLs, not just the syntax

Every <loc> must be absolute, on the same host as the sitemap, and canonical. Listing redirects, noindexed pages or non-canonical variants wastes crawl budget and dilutes the signal.

Treat lastmod as a promise

Google ignores lastmod on sites where it is generated at build time and changes on every deploy. Emit it only when the page's content genuinely changed, or omit it.

What this tool does

Parses <urlset> and <sitemapindex>
Validates <loc>, <lastmod>, <changefreq>, <priority>
Counts URLs and warns above sitemaps.org limits (50K / 50MB)
Client-side only — no upload, no logging

Questions

Frequently asked

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