Sitemap Analysis & Generation
When to Use
- Use when analyzing an existing XML sitemap or generating a new one.
- Use when the user mentions sitemap issues, sitemap generation, or sitemap validation.
- Use when checking URL coverage, sitemap limits, and sitemap quality rules.
Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap
Validation Checks
- Valid XML format
- URL count <50,000 per file (protocol limit)
- All URLs return HTTP 200
-
<lastmod> dates are accurate (not all identical)
- No deprecated tags:
<priority> and <changefreq> are ignored by Google
- Sitemap referenced in robots.txt
- Compare crawled pages vs sitemap; flag missing pages
Quality Signals
- Sitemap index file if >50k URLs
- Split by content type (pages, posts, images, videos)
- No non-canonical URLs in sitemap
- No noindexed URLs in sitemap
- No redirected URLs in sitemap
- HTTPS URLs only (no HTTP)
Common Issues
| Issue |
Severity |
Fix |
| >50k URLs in single file |
Critical |
Split with sitemap index |
| Non-200 URLs |
High |
Remove or fix broken URLs |
| Noindexed URLs included |
High |
Remove from sitemap |
| Redirected URLs included |
Medium |
Update to final URLs |
| All identical lastmod |
Low |
Use actual modification dates |
| Priority/changefreq used |
Info |
Can remove (ignored by Google) |
Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap
Process
- Ask for business type (or auto-detect from existing site)
- Load industry template from
../seo-plan/assets/ directory
- Interactive structure planning with user
- Apply quality gates:
- ⚠️ WARNING at 30+ location pages (require 60%+ unique content)
- 🛑 HARD STOP at 50+ location pages (require justification)
- Generate valid XML output
- Split at 50k URLs with sitemap index
- Generate STRUCTURE.md documentation
Safe Programmatic Pages (OK at scale)
✅ Integration pages (with real setup docs)
✅ Template/tool pages (with downloadable content)
✅ Glossary pages (200+ word definitions)
✅ Product pages (unique specs, reviews)
✅ User profile pages (user-generated content)
Penalty Risk (avoid at scale)
❌ Location pages with only city name swapped
❌ "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value
❌ "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data
❌ AI-generated pages without human review and unique value
Sitemap Format
Standard Sitemap
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>
Sitemap Index (for >50k URLs)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
Error Handling
-
URL unreachable: Report the HTTP status code and suggest checking if the site is live
-
No sitemap found: Check common locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, robots.txt reference) before reporting "not found"
-
Invalid XML format: Report specific parsing errors with line numbers
-
Rate limiting detected: Back off and report partial results with a note about retry timing
Output
For Analysis
-
VALIDATION-REPORT.md: analysis results
- Issues list with severity
- Recommendations
For Generation
-
sitemap.xml (or split files with index)
-
STRUCTURE.md: site architecture documentation
- URL count and organization summary
