Input Sitemap.xml
0 chars
Validation Results
0 errors
ToolkitBook
Check your sitemap.xml for XML syntax errors, protocol compliance, missing required tags, and common mistakes that prevent search engines from crawling your site. The validator identifies duplicate URLs, validates date formats, checks size limits, and detects encoding issues. Detailed error reports include line numbers and fix suggestions for every issue found. Supports standard sitemaps, sitemap index files, and extended formats for images and video. All processing happens locally in your browser—your sitemap data never leaves your computer, making it safe for validating development or staging environments. Webmasters, SEO professionals, and developers use this tool to catch errors before submitting to Google Search Console.
The validator checks XML syntax including tag matching, proper nesting, and character encoding. Every opening tag must have a corresponding closing tag, and elements must nest correctly within each other. Special characters in URLs—ampersands, less-than signs, greater-than signs—must be properly escaped as &, <, and > respectively. The validator catches unescaped characters that would break XML parsing.
Beyond syntax, the tool validates protocol compliance. The <urlset> tag must include the namespace declaration xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9". Each <url> element requires exactly one <loc> tag containing an absolute URL with protocol (http or https). Relative URLs like /page.html are not allowed.
When present, the validator checks <lastmod> dates against W3C Datetime format (YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss+00:00). The <changefreq> tag must contain valid values: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or never. The <priority> tag accepts values from 0.0 to 1.0. Invalid formats are flagged with specific fix suggestions.
Sitemaps have hard limits: 50,000 URLs maximum per file, 50 MB uncompressed file size. The validator counts URLs and displays file size, warning if you approach these limits. Duplicate URLs across your sitemap are identified—each URL should appear only once to avoid wasting crawl budget.
Non-ASCII characters in URLs must be percent-encoded. The validator catches unencoded accented letters, Chinese characters, and other non-ASCII text. Spaces in URLs should appear as %20, not literal spaces. Protocol consistency is checked—if your site uses HTTPS, all sitemap URLs should use HTTPS.
The tool displays URL count, error count, warning count, file size, and sitemap type (standard, index, or extended). These statistics help you verify your sitemap structure at a glance. A sudden drop in URL count from your expected number might indicate a generation problem.
Paste your sitemap.xml content into the input area. Click Validate to check for errors. Results appear in the output area with line numbers for each issue found. The input editor shows line numbers alongside your content, making it easy to locate problems. Fix issues in the input area and click Validate again to confirm corrections. Use Copy Results to save the validation report, or copy your corrected sitemap directly from the input area.
All validation runs locally in your browser as JavaScript. Your sitemap data never leaves your computer—no server uploads, no accounts required. This makes the tool safe for validating development environments, staging sites, or unreleased features without accidental exposure.
Once your sitemap passes validation, submit it through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Keep your sitemap updated when adding or removing pages. Include only canonical URLs—search engines use sitemap URLs as canonical hints, so avoid listing multiple URLs for the same content.
XML parse errors often cascade from a single problem. Fix the first reported error and revalidate—many subsequent errors may disappear. Missing namespace declarations cause protocol failures. For ampersands in URLs, double-encode: first as & for XML, then encode & in the URL itself as %26. Large sitemaps approaching size limits should be split into multiple files referenced by a sitemap index.