Free XML Sitemap Validator
Validate your XML sitemap for errors, check metadata coverage, and get a performance score. Ensure your sitemap is search engine ready — completely free.
Why Use Our Sitemap Validator?
Ensure your XML sitemap meets all standards and best practices. Catch errors before they impact your search engine indexing.
XML Validation
Validates XML structure, namespace declarations, and proper tag formatting against sitemap protocol standards.
Performance Score
Get a 0-100 score based on XML validity, metadata coverage, and proper URL formatting.
Error Detection
Identifies critical errors like invalid URLs, missing namespaces, and malformed XML that block indexing.
Metadata Coverage
Checks for lastmod, priority, and changefreq tags to maximize crawl efficiency and freshness signals.
Response Metrics
Measures file size and response time to ensure your sitemap loads quickly for search engine bots.
URL Analysis
Lists all URLs in your sitemap with their metadata for easy review and verification.
The Complete Guide to Sitemap Validation
Why Validate Your Sitemap?
A valid XML sitemap is essential for search engine optimization. When search engines like Google and Bing crawl your site, they use your sitemap to discover and prioritize pages for indexing. An invalid or malformed sitemap can prevent search engines from properly indexing your content.
Validation ensures your sitemap follows the XML sitemap protocol, has proper namespace declarations, contains valid URLs, and includes optional metadata that helps search engines crawl more efficiently.
Regular validation is especially important after site migrations, CMS updates, or changes to your sitemap generation logic.
Common Sitemap Errors
Missing Namespace
The sitemap must declare the proper XML namespace:xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
Invalid URLs
All URLs in <loc> tags must be absolute URLs starting with http:// or https://.
Malformed XML
Missing closing tags, unescaped special characters, or incorrect nesting will cause parsing failures.
Invalid Priority Values
Priority must be a decimal between 0.0 and 1.0. Values outside this range are ignored by search engines.
Invalid Changefreq
Only these values are valid: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never. Custom values are not supported.
Metadata Best Practices
<lastmod> - Last Modified Date
Use ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD or full datetime). Only update when content significantly changes. Inaccurate dates reduce crawl efficiency.
<priority> - Relative Priority
A hint to search engines about page importance (0.0 to 1.0). Default is 0.5. Note: Google largely ignores this, but other engines may use it.
<changefreq> - Change Frequency
How often content changes. While useful for some crawlers, Google treats this as a hint only. Focus on accurate lastmod dates instead.
Performance Optimization
- Keep sitemaps small: Stay well under the 50MB and 50,000 URL limits. Smaller files load faster and reduce timeout risks.
- Use gzip compression: Serve sitemaps with .xml.gz extension to reduce bandwidth and improve response times.
- Cache appropriately: Set reasonable cache headers. Search engines don't need real-time updates unless content changes frequently.
- Validate after changes: Run validation after any sitemap generation code changes, CMS updates, or site migrations.
Score Meaning
- 90-100Excellent - Ready for indexing
- 70-89Good - Minor improvements possible
- 50-69Fair - Fix warnings for better results
- <50Poor - Critical issues need attention
Valid Changefreq Values
alwayshourlydailyweeklymonthlyyearlynever
Pro Tip
After validation, submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Monitor for crawl errors and coverage issues to ensure all URLs are being indexed properly.
Validate Sitemaps in 3 Simple Steps
From URL to complete validation report in seconds. Identify issues and ensure your sitemap is ready for search engines.
Enter Sitemap URL
- Paste the direct URL to your sitemap.xml
- Works with sitemap index files too
Validate & Analyze
- Checks XML structure and formatting
- Analyzes metadata coverage and URLs
Review & Export
- Get detailed validation report with score
- Download report or copy URLs
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Have Questions?
Clear answers to common questions about our tools,
data, and how the analysis works.
A sitemap validator checks your XML sitemap for errors, validates the structure against the sitemap protocol, and ensures all URLs and metadata are properly formatted. It helps ensure search engines can parse your sitemap correctly.
The validation score (0-100) reflects your sitemap's overall quality. A score of 90+ means excellent quality ready for indexing. 70-89 is good with minor improvements possible. Below 70 indicates issues that should be fixed for optimal search engine crawling.
The validator checks for missing XML declarations, incorrect namespace declarations, malformed XML structure, invalid URLs, incorrect priority values (must be 0.0-1.0), and invalid changefreq values. It categorizes issues as critical errors or warnings.
Metadata coverage shows how many URLs in your sitemap include optional tags like lastmod, priority, and changefreq. While not required, these tags help search engines crawl more efficiently by understanding when content was updated and its relative importance.
Response time measures how quickly your server returns the sitemap. Fast response times ensure search engine bots can fetch your sitemap quickly during crawling. Slow sitemaps may timeout or be deprioritized by crawlers.
Yes, the validator works with both regular sitemaps (urlset) and sitemap index files (sitemapindex). For index files, it validates the structure and reports how many child sitemaps are referenced.
Yes, our sitemap validator is completely free to use. You can validate up to 10 sitemaps per year. Simply sign up for a free account to start validating your sitemaps.
Review the Issues tab for specific errors and warnings. Common fixes include adding the proper xmlns namespace, fixing malformed URLs, correcting priority values to be between 0.0 and 1.0, and using valid changefreq values like daily or weekly.
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