All checks / AI Discovery

Error sitemap-missing

A sitemap is reachable

What this check means

Checks that an XML sitemap is reachable, either declared in robots.txt or at the conventional /sitemap.xml.

Why it matters

A sitemap is the complete list of what you want found. Without one, a crawler discovers pages only by following links, so anything weakly linked — new pages especially — may never be seen at all.

How we detect it

We take the first Sitemap: URL declared in robots.txt, or fall back to /sitemap.xml, and require a 2xx response containing XML.

How to fix it

Generate an XML sitemap, serve it at /sitemap.xml, and declare it in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line.

Check whether this applies to your site.

Run an AI audit

Other AI Discovery checks