Sitemap Errors Checker
Crawl every URL in your sitemap and check status codes, canonicals, noindex tags, and more. Free sitemap health auditor for any website — no login required.
Your sitemap often contains URLs Google can't crawl, shouldn't crawl, or that simply don't exist anymore. These sitemap errors include 404s, redirecting URLs, and pages marked 'noindex' or blocked by robots.txt. They waste Google's crawl budget, causing delays in indexing your important content and effectively slowing down your site's SEO progress. How to Audit Sitemap Errors Before Google Search Console Flags Them What Is a Sitemap Health Auditor? Sitemap Health Auditor is a free browser-based tool that scans every URL listed in your XML sitemap. It immediately identifies common sitemap errors like broken links, unintended redirects, and pages explicitly blocked from indexing. This tool gives you a clear picture of your sitemap's accuracy without requiring any login or setup. Why It Matters for SEO Crawl budget isn't infinite; Google allocates it based on your site's authority and size. When your sitemap directs Googlebot to 404s or redirect chains, it expends that budget without finding new indexable content. This inefficiency means Google could spend 20% of its allotted crawl time on your sitemap, only to find a quarter of the URLs are broken or non-indexable. For large sites with millions of URLs, this isn't a minor annoyance; it’s a critical bottleneck. Google typically recrawls established sites every 3-7 days, but if your sitemap is full of junk, those valuable crawls might bypass genuinely new or updated content. These sitemap errors actively delay the discovery and indexing of your important pages. You’re essentially telling Google to waste its time. The real issue isn't just wasted server resources; it's the missed opportunity for your valuable content to rank. How to Use It Here's how to run a quick sitemap audit: Go to https://scrawl.tools/tools/sitemap-auditor. You don't need to log in or create an account to start. Paste your sitemap URL into the input field…
Read the full guideA sitemap errors checker crawls every URL in your XML sitemap and flags 404s, redirects, noindex tags, and canonical problems. Paste your sitemap URL below for a full health audit.
Find sitemap errors before Search Console flags them
A sitemap errors checker catches 404s, redirects, and noindex pages listed in your XML sitemap. Validate sitemap structure first, then audit robots.txt so crawlers can reach every submitted URL.
What is a sitemap.xml health check?
A sitemap.xml health check crawls every URL listed in your XML sitemap and tests each one live, recording its HTTP status code, canonical tag, noindex directive, and response time. It is different from sitemap validation, which only confirms the XML is well-formed. Validation tells you the file parses; a health check tells you whether the pages you are actually submitting to Google are indexable. The tool above runs a full sitemap.xml health check on any sitemap URL, giving you a ground-truth view of what search engines find when they fetch each listed page rather than what the file claims should be there. That distinction matters because a sitemap can be perfectly valid XML while pointing at dozens of dead, redirected, or noindexed pages.
When to run a sitemap.xml health check
Run a health check after any migration to confirm every submitted URL still resolves to a healthy, indexable page, and on a regular schedule to catch pages that have quietly changed. Large e-commerce sites benefit most: product pages are taken offline, redirected, or flagged noindex as stock changes, often without the SEO team being told. A monthly check — and an immediate one after a template change, bulk deletion, or CMS upgrade — surfaces these problems before they erode your indexed page count and waste crawl budget on URLs that will never rank. Treat it as routine maintenance, not a one-off.
How to read the results
The audit groups results by status so you can triage quickly. Healthy pages return 200, carry a self-referencing canonical, and have no noindex directive — these belong in the sitemap. Pages returning a 3xx redirect should be swapped for their final destination URLs. Pages carrying a noindex tag should be removed entirely, because Google ignores them and listing them spends crawl budget on pages that cannot be indexed. Pages with a non-self canonical are deferring to another URL and send a contradictory signal, so they should come out too. Anything returning 4xx or 5xx needs immediate investigation, since broken URLs in a sitemap tell Google your list is unreliable.
How to clean up your sitemap
Filter the results for every non-200 response and every page with a noindex tag or non-self canonical — together these form your cleanup list. Remove the problem URLs, then resubmit the sitemap in Google Search Console and watch the indexed count recover. For WordPress, set your SEO plugin's sitemap exclusion rules so noindex and non-canonical pages are kept out automatically rather than cleaned up by hand after each content change. Re-run the health check after resubmitting to confirm the sitemap now contains only indexable, self-canonical, 200-status URLs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a sitemap health audit?
A sitemap health audit crawls every URL listed in your XML sitemap and checks each one live — verifying the HTTP status code, canonical tag, noindex directive, and response time. Unlike sitemap validation (which only checks XML structure), a health audit reveals whether submitted URLs are actually indexable.
Why are some URLs in my sitemap returning 404?
URLs return 404 in a sitemap audit when pages have been deleted or moved without a redirect being added. These should be immediately removed from your sitemap. Either restore the page, add a 301 redirect to a relevant alternative, or remove the URL. Keeping 404s in your sitemap wastes Googlebot's crawl allocation.
Should noindex pages be in my sitemap?
No. Pages with a noindex directive should be removed from your sitemap. Google will ignore them anyway — including them only wastes crawl budget that could be spent on indexable pages. After removing them, resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console and monitor the indexed URL count.
What does it mean if a sitemap URL has a non-self canonical?
A non-self canonical means the page is deferring to a different URL as the preferred version. These pages should be removed from your sitemap and replaced with their canonical destination URLs. Submitting non-canonical URLs tells Google you want them indexed, but the canonical tag says otherwise — a contradictory signal.
How often should I audit my sitemap?
For active sites, run a sitemap health audit monthly and after any significant content change — migration, bulk deletion, template update, or CMS upgrade. E-commerce sites with frequently changing product availability should audit more frequently, as products going out of stock often trigger noindex or 404 responses.
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