Sitemap XML Inspector

What is the Sitemap XML Inspector?

The Sitemap XML Inspector is a client-side tool that analyzes your XML sitemap for common issues that can affect search engine crawling and indexing efficiency. It detects duplicate URLs that waste crawl budget, validates lastmod dates against W3C Datetime format, identifies non-absolute URLs that crawlers cannot process, and flags HTTP/HTTPS protocol mixing that causes duplicate content problems — providing a quality score with actionable recommendations.

How to Use

1. Paste your sitemap XML content into the input field
2. Click "Inspect" or wait for automatic processing
3. Review the score, URL count, and detected findings
4. Check specific issues: duplicates, invalid dates, non-absolute URLs, protocol mixing
5. Export a full report in JSON or Markdown format for sharing with your team

Example: Sitemap with Issues

This sitemap has several problems the inspector will detect:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-03-15</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>March 15, 2024</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://example.com/blog</loc>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>/about</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

What Issues Are Detected?

• Duplicate URLs — Same URL appearing multiple times wastes crawl budget and can confuse search engines about the canonical version
• Invalid lastmod dates — Dates must use W3C Datetime format (ISO 8601). Invalid formats are ignored by crawlers, reducing the effectiveness of your sitemap
• Non-absolute URLs — All sitemap URLs must be fully qualified with protocol and domain. Relative URLs violate the Sitemap protocol and are rejected by search engines
• HTTP/HTTPS mixing — Using both protocols signals potential duplicate content issues and splits link equity between HTTP and HTTPS versions
• Invalid changefreq — Only specific values are allowed: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never
• Invalid priority — Priority must be a decimal between 0.0 and 1.0

Sitemap Best Practices

• Keep each sitemap under 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed — use a sitemap index for larger sites
• Use HTTPS for all URLs if your site serves content over HTTPS
• Update lastmod only when page content actually changes — do not auto-update timestamps
• Remove duplicate URLs — each page should appear exactly once
• Use absolute URLs with consistent trailing slashes matching your canonical URLs
• Reference your sitemap in robots.txt with a Sitemap directive
• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Privacy and Security

All inspection happens entirely in your browser using the native DOMParser API. Your sitemap content — which reveals your site structure and all indexed URLs — is never transmitted to any server. No data is stored, logged, or shared.