Free XML Sitemap Validator
Search Console says "Couldn't fetch" or "Sitemap has errors". Now what?
Those messages are short on detail. Paste the sitemap here and the usual suspects show up with the exact entry number. These are the causes people hit most:
- “Not valid XML”. Nine times out of ten there is a raw
&in a URL, like?a=1&b=2. In XML it must be written&. - Relative URLs. Entries like
/about/are not accepted. Everylocneeds the full https address. - Dates that do not exist. A lastmod of 2026-02-30 is rejected.
- The wrong host. A sitemap for example.com cannot list URLs on another domain.
- Too many URLs. One file may hold 50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed. Split bigger sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index.
What a healthy sitemap looks like
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<urlset xmlns='http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9'>
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2026-10-30</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>Only loc is required. Google uses lastmod when it is consistently accurate and ignores changefreq and priority. An honest lastmod, the date the page’s content really changed, is worth having. A lastmod that is always set to today teaches crawlers to ignore it.
Sitemap index files and compressed sitemaps
When a site is large, the sitemap becomes a sitemap index: a small file that lists the addresses of other sitemap files. Paste an index here and the tool checks each listed sitemap and its date. Then open each child sitemap and validate it too, since errors live in the children.
Sitemaps may also be gzipped, with a name like sitemap.xml.gz. The 50 MB limit applies to the uncompressed size, so compression helps you transfer the file, not fit more URLs in it.
Common WordPress setups
- WordPress itself creates a basic sitemap at
/wp-sitemap.xml. - SEO plugins such as Rank Math or Yoast create their own, usually a sitemap index. Running two sitemap systems at once leads to duplicates, so turn one off.
- Check that the URLs use the same https, www choice and trailing slash style as your canonical tags, or you will list addresses that redirect.
A short walk-through with a broken file
Imagine a sitemap with three entries. The first is correct. The second uses the relative address /contact/. The third has the date 2026-02-30. Pasted here, the tool reports a sitemap of three URLs with two errors: entry 2 is not an absolute http or https address, and entry 3 has a lastmod that is not a valid date. You fix the address by adding your domain, change the date to a real one, paste again, and the errors disappear. The point is that you see problems by entry number, so even a sitemap with thousands of URLs can be fixed by going straight to the lines that matter.
Other kinds of sitemap
Basic sitemaps list pages, but there are extensions for images, videos and news that add extra tags inside each entry. A sitemap that uses them is still a normal sitemap, and the tool reads it the same way, checking the core fields. If you rely on those extensions, check the extra tags against the search engine’s own documentation as well.
What a validator cannot see
This tool reads the text you give it. It cannot know whether a listed URL redirects, returns a 404 or carries a noindex tag, and those URLs do not belong in a sitemap. Check them in Search Console’s page indexing report. A sitemap is a suggestion, not an instruction. Listing a page helps crawlers discover it, but it does not guarantee that the page will be indexed. To make a fresh sitemap from a list, use the XML sitemap generator.
After you fix it
- Upload the corrected file to the same address.
- In Search Console, open Sitemaps and resubmit it.
- Check the status after a day or two. It can take time for the report to refresh.
- Make sure your robots.txt includes a
Sitemap:line pointing to it, so other search engines find it too.
FAQ
Paste the XML above. It lists every error and warning with the entry number.
50,000 URLs or 50 MB uncompressed per file.
Only pages you want indexed. Leave out redirects, noindex pages and duplicates.
No. It is checked in your browser.
A sitemap only suggests pages. Google decides what to index, and some listed pages may be duplicates, thin or not yet crawled.
Whenever pages are added, removed or meaningfully changed. Sitemaps made by a plugin update themselves. A hand-made one needs regenerating after changes, and a stale sitemap that lists deleted pages is worse than none.
Yes. Large sites use many, listed in a sitemap index. Just make sure each page appears in only one of them.