XML Sitemap Validator
Ensure your sitemap is properly formatted and ready for search engines.
Sitemap Validator
Check your sitemap.xml for syntax errors, validate its structure, and ensure compliance with standard protocols.
Ready to Validate
Enter a sitemap URL above to begin parsing and validating the XML syntax and structure.
What makes a valid XML Sitemap?
A valid XML sitemap must follow specific formatting rules defined by the sitemaps.org protocol. If your sitemap has errors, search engines like Google might ignore it completely, hurting your site's indexation.
Common Validation Rules
- Size Limits: A single sitemap file cannot contain more than 50,000 URLs, and must be no larger than 50MB (uncompressed).
- Valid XML: The file must be properly formatted XML, meaning all tags must be closed and special characters (like
&) must be entity-escaped. - Required Tags: It must begin with an opening
<urlset>tag and contain<url>entries, each with a required<loc>(location) tag.
Sitemap Indexes
If you have a very large website with more than 50,000 URLs, you must split your sitemap into multiple files. You then link to these files using a Sitemap Index file. A sitemap index uses the <sitemapindex> and <sitemap> tags instead of <urlset> and <url>. Our tool can validate both types.
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