Matan · SEO · Technical

Sitemap

An XML sitemap is the explicit map of URLs you want discovered — especially for new or weakly linked pages.

Pass condition in our engine: A sitemap is listed in robots.txt, available at /sitemap.xml, or linked from the page.

1. Problem description

Without a sitemap, crawlers rely only on links. Orphan articles, paginated archives and fresh URLs take longer to appear. A stale sitemap that lists 404s is almost as harmful as having none.

2. Most common causes

  • The CMS never generated /sitemap.xml.
  • robots.txt does not advertise the Sitemap: URL.
  • The sitemap is blocked by robots.txt or basic auth.
  • Only a plugin shortcode mentions “sitemap” in HTML, with no real XML file.

3. How to fix it

  1. Publish an XML sitemap (or sitemap index) at a stable URL.
  2. Add a Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml line to robots.txt.
  3. Include only canonical, indexable 200 URLs.
  4. Submit it in Google Search Console and keep lastmod honest.

Test this check

We fetch only this URL (plus robots.txt / llms.txt at the domain root when the check needs them). We do not crawl the rest of the site like a full report.

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