SiteAud!tLint Support

Warning Technical SEO

No XML sitemap found

Severity
Warning
Impact
Medium
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
no_sitemap

Why it matters

No sitemap was found in robots.txt or at /sitemap.xml. Sitemaps help search engines discover and prioritise URLs.

How to fix it

Generate an XML sitemap, reference it in robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

What this means

SiteAud!tLint found no XML sitemap for the site. It looks for sitemaps declared with Sitemap: lines in robots.txt, and if there are none, tries /sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml. The evidence lists what failed, such as a 404 or a file that is not valid XML.

This check only runs when Discover and crawl XML sitemaps is on in Crawl settings. With it off, sitemaps are not looked for.

Why it matters

A sitemap lists the pages you want search engines to find. It matters most for:

  • Large sites, where some pages are many clicks deep.
  • New sites with few links from other websites.
  • Sites that change often, such as shops and news sites, where lastmod dates help search engines find updates.

Small, well-linked sites can be fully crawled without one. A sitemap is still worth having, because Search Console's indexing reports are easier to use with one.

How to add one

  1. Generate it automatically. Most CMS platforms do this out of the box, or with an SEO plugin; frameworks have sitemap packages. Avoid hand-maintained files, which go stale.
  2. Include only indexable, final URLs that return a 200. See Non-200 URL in XML sitemap.
  3. Declare it in robots.txt, especially if it is not at /sitemap.xml:

`` Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml ``

  1. Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps, and in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Large sites can split URLs across several sitemaps listed in a sitemap index file, up to 50,000 URLs per sitemap.

Verify the fix

Recrawl. The audit log shows how many URLs were found in how many sitemap files.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the Technical SEO score 3 points, plus up to 12 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. Weakens rankings, crawling or measurement. Fix after critical issues.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick No XML sitemap found. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (medium) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code no_sitemap. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.

Guides that cover this issue