Sitemap Check: a beginner's guide
Find and analyze XML sitemaps
Sitemaps: the index page you build for search engines
An XML sitemap is a structured file — usually published at `yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml` — that lists every page on your website you want search engines to discover and index. Think of it as the table of contents you hand to a librarian: "here is everything I have, here is when each item was last updated, here is roughly how important each one is." Search engines use it as a discovery aid, especially for large sites or sites with thin internal linking, where finding pages by following links would be slow or unreliable.
You should care because search engines cannot rank pages they don't know exist, and the sitemap is your most direct tool for making sure they know. New blog posts, new product pages, new landing pages, an updated about page — all of them get discovered faster when they appear in a sitemap that gets submitted to Google Search Console. Without a sitemap, you are relying on Google to find your new content by crawling links, which can take days or weeks for fresh content on small sites.
The five things every sitemap audit looks at:
Does the sitemap exist and is it reachable? A sitemap that returns a 404 or a 500 is the same as no sitemap at all.
Are all listed URLs canonical? Every URL in the sitemap should be the version you want indexed — not a redirect, not a duplicate, not a parameter-tracked variant.
Do all listed URLs return a 200 status? Sitemap entries that 404 or 301 to other pages are wasted crawl budget.
Are excluded pages actually excluded? Internal admin pages, search-result pages, login pages, and thank-you pages should not be in the sitemap.
Is the sitemap referenced in `robots.txt`? The line `Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml` in `robots.txt` is the formal way to point crawlers at it.
Three questions a sitemap audit answers:
Is search engines actually able to discover all the pages I want indexed?
Are there pages in my sitemap that should not be there (admin pages, drafts, internal pages)?
After my last content launch, did the new pages actually make it into the sitemap?
The cost of ignoring your sitemap is the slow accumulation of pages that search engines don't know about. New content takes longer to rank. Stale content stays in the index after you've deleted it. The fix is almost free on any modern CMS — most platforms generate sitemaps automatically — but the audit is what catches the cases where the automation has quietly broken. The official spec is in Google's sitemap documentation, and the format itself has been stable for over fifteen years.
The Sitemap Check endpoint, in plain language
In one sentence: Find and analyze XML sitemaps
Discovers and analyzes XML sitemaps to understand site structure and content. Checks robots.txt (robots.txt file) references, common sitemap locations, and parses sitemap content.
Don't worry if some of the words above are still unfamiliar — there's a plain-language glossary at the bottom of this page, and most of the terms link to their own beginner guides if you want to learn more.
What is actually happening when you call it
Here's what's actually happening behind the scenes when you call this endpoint:
Searches for sitemaps at common locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml) and robots.txt (robots.txt file) references. Parses sitemap XML per the sitemaps.org protocol to extract URLs, last modified dates, change frequency, and priority values. Handles sitemap indexes with multiple child sitemaps.
If you're using an AI assistant through MCP, you don't need to understand any of the technical details — the assistant calls the tool and translates the result for you.
Why this specific tool matters
Let's skip the marketing fluff and answer the only question that actually matters: why should you, a real human with a real to-do list, care about the Sitemap Check tool? Here's the plain-English version, written the way you'd hear it from a friend who happens to do this for a living.
Sitemaps reveal site structure, content freshness, and crawling priorities. They're essential for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) auditing, content discovery, and understanding how a site wants search engines to index its content.
Picture this in real life. Imagine a content strategist. Here's the situation they're walking into: Map all pages on a competitor's site through their sitemap to understand content strategy. Without the right tool, that person would be stuck copy-pasting between five browser tabs, reading documentation written for engineers, and crossing their fingers that the answer they cobble together is correct. With the Sitemap Check tool, the same person gets a clear answer in seconds — no spreadsheets, no guessing, no waiting for someone on the infrastructure team to free up.
Three questions this tool answers in plain English. If any of these have ever crossed your mind, the Sitemap Check tool is built for you:
Are search engines actually able to crawl, understand, and recommend my pages?
What is the single biggest fix I could make today to climb in Google?
How does my site compare against the technical SEO checklist that the top results all pass?
You can either click the tool and get the answer yourself, or ask your AI assistant — connected through MCP (Model Context Protocol) — to ask the question for you and translate the answer into something you can paste into Slack.
Who gets the most out of this. Marketers, content writers, freelancers running client sites, founders trying to grow without paying for ads, and SEO specialists running monthly health checks. If you see yourself in that list, this is one of the EdgeDNS tools you should bookmark today.
What happens if you skip this entirely. Skip it and search engines quietly stop sending you traffic and you don't find out until the next quarterly review. That's why running this check — even once a month — is one of the cheapest forms of insurance you can give your domain.
Available on the free plan. The technical details: `GET /v1/domain/sitemap`.
When would I actually use this?
If you're still on the fence about whether the Sitemap Check tool belongs in your toolbox, this section is for you. Below you'll meet three real people — a content strategist, a SEO specialist, and a data engineer — facing three real situations where this tool turns a stressful afternoon into a five-minute task. Read whichever story sounds closest to your week.
Story 1: Content Discovery
Imagine you're a content strategist. Map all pages on a competitor's site through their sitemap to understand content strategy.
Why it matters: Discover competitor content for gap analysis and strategy planning.
Story 2: SEO Health Check
Imagine you're an SEO specialist. Verify sitemap is properly formatted, accessible, and includes all important pages.
Why it matters: Ensure search engines can discover and index all content efficiently.
Story 3: Web Scraping Preparation
Imagine you're a data engineer. Use sitemap to generate a complete list of URLs for web scraping projects.
Why it matters: Efficiently crawl websites by starting with known URL (web address) lists.
Common situations across teams. Beyond the three stories above, here are the everyday workplace moments when people across the company reach for the Sitemap Check tool — or one of the tools right next to it in this category. If any of these are on your calendar this month, that's your sign:
Before launching a new page, site, or campaign — to catch the dumb mistakes.
During a quarterly SEO health check.
When organic traffic suddenly drops and you need to find out why.
When pitching a new client and you need an audit deck in under an hour.
If you can see yourself in even one of those bullets, the Sitemap Check tool will pay for itself the first time you use it.
Still not sure? Here's the easiest test in the world. Open Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other AI assistant connected to the EdgeDNS MCP server and ask, in your own words: "Is the Sitemap Check tool useful for my job?" The assistant will look at the tool, ask you a couple of follow-up questions about what you're trying to accomplish, and give you a straight answer in plain English. No commitment, no signup forms, no jargon.
The easiest way: just ask your AI assistant
If you've connected the EdgeDNS MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Cursor, or any other AI assistant, you don't need to write any code. Just ask in plain English:
"Use the Sitemap Check tool to check example.com and explain anything that looks wrong in plain language."
The AI will figure out which tool to call, fill in the right parameters, run it, and then explain the result back to you. No copy-pasting between tabs. No reading raw JSON. No memorizing endpoint names.
MCP (Model Context Protocol) access is free on every plan, including the free tier. One API key works for both REST and AI — you do not have to choose.
The technical way: call it from code
If you're a developer and want to call the endpoint from a script or your own application, here's the simplest possible example. Replace the placeholder API key with the real one from your dashboard.
# Replace edns_live_YOUR_KEY with your real API key from the dashboard
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer edns_live_YOUR_KEY" \
"https://api.edgedns.dev/v1/domain/sitemap?domain=example.com"What you need to provide
There's just one piece of information you need to provide. The table below explains exactly what it is and what a real value looks like.
| Field | Type | Required? | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
domain | string | Yes | The domain to find sitemaps for | example.com |
What you get back
When you call this tool, you'll get back a JSON object with the fields below. If you're talking to it through an AI assistant, the assistant reads these for you and explains them in plain language — you don't need to memorize them.
| Field | Type | What you'll see in it |
|---|---|---|
domain | string | The queried domain |
found | boolean | Whether a sitemap was found |
url | string | Primary sitemap URL (web address) |
type | string | Sitemap type (xml, index, etc.) |
sitemaps | array | Discovered sitemaps (up to 10) |
urlCount | number | Total URLs found in sitemaps |
sitemapCount | number | Number of sitemaps discovered |
fromRobotsTxt | boolean | Whether sitemap was referenced in robots.txt (robots.txt file) |
lastModified | string | Last modification date if available |
warnings | array | Warnings about sitemap issues (e.g., too many URLs, invalid format) |
score | number | Sitemap health score (0-100) |
grade | string | Letter grade (A-F) based on score |
recommendations | array | Sitemap improvement suggestions |
Words you might be wondering about
If any words on this page felt like jargon, here's a plain-language version. Click any linked term to read a full beginner-friendly guide.
URL (web address) — The full address of a page, like https://example.com/about.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Everything you do to help search engines like Google find, understand, and rank your website.
robots.txt (robots.txt file) — A simple text file at the root of a website that tells search engine crawlers which pages they're allowed to look at and which to skip.
sitemap.xml (XML sitemap) — A file that lists every important page on your website, helping search engines find them all efficiently.
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