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Sitemap Validator

Checked against the sitemap protocol, live as you edit.

Pasted text is checked in your browser.

3 URLs found

1 URL with an unescaped &. A literal & inside <loc> breaks the XML. Write it as &amp;, so ?a=1&b=2 becomes ?a=1&amp;b=2. One bad character can make a parser reject the whole file.

1 lastmod value not in W3C format. Use 2026-09-15 or 2026-09-15T10:00:00Z. Other formats, such as 15/09/2026, are ignored.

1 URL set changefreq or priority. Google has said it ignores both. They do no harm, but they take up bytes and give a false sense of control.

1 duplicate URL. Each URL should be listed once. Duplicates cost nothing functionally but bloat the file.

2 of 3 URLs have no lastmod. Partial dates are fine, but the URLs without one look equally fresh or stale to a crawler.

A valid sitemap only helps if the robots.txt points to it.

Check both together with the Robots.txt & Sitemap Checker.

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Technical SEO guide

One bad character can make Google throw away a whole sitemap

A sitemap is plain XML, and XML is unforgiving. A single unescaped & in a URL, a tag that never closes, or a missing namespace can make a parser reject the file entirely, not just the one entry that is wrong. Search Console then reports "couldn't fetch" or "sitemap could not be read", and none of the URLs inside get the discovery help the sitemap was meant to give them.

What this validator checks

  • Structure — a <urlset> or <sitemapindex> root, the sitemap namespace, matching open and close tags, and an XML declaration.
  • Every entry — a <loc> on each one, under 2,048 characters, with & written as &amp;.
  • Dates and values — lastmod in W3C format and not in the future, plus valid changefreq and priority values.
  • Limits — 50,000 URLs and 50 MB per file, then split into several files under a sitemap index.
  • Hygiene — duplicate URLs, URLs on a different host, and relative paths where a full URL is required.

Why lastmod is the field that matters

Google has said it reads lastmod and ignores changefreq and priority. A lastmod that changes on every build, whether or not the page changed, teaches Google to distrust the field, so only update it when the content does.

How this differs from the other sitemap tools

The XML Sitemap Generatorbuilds one from a site's links, and the Robots.txt & Sitemap Checker confirms the two files agree. This tool is for the file itself: paste any sitemap, from any generator, and see what is wrong with it.

Frequently asked

Does it check that each URL actually loads?

No. It validates the file, not every page inside it. Crawling thousands of URLs from a free tool would be slow and unkind to the site being checked. To test the links on one page, use the Broken Link Checker.

Can it read a gzipped sitemap?

Not directly. Unzip the .xml.gz file first and paste the XML.

Is my pasted sitemap uploaded?

No. Pasted text is checked in your browser. Only the Fetch button sends a request, and only to the address you typed.