Keep XML sitemaps valid

An invalid or malformed sitemap is silently ignored by search engines, leaving newly published or orphaned pages undiscovered by crawlers.

Quick Reference

• The root element must be <urlset> with the correct xmlns namespace
• Each <url> must contain exactly one <loc> element with a fully qualified, percent-encoded URL
• Maximum 50,000 URLs and 50 MB per sitemap file; use a sitemap index for larger sites
• Encode XML special characters: & → &, < → <, > → >, " → ", ' → '

Check

Fetch the sitemap and validate it against the sitemaps.org schema. Check that the xmlns attribute is http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9, all <loc> values are absolute URLs, no file exceeds 50,000 URLs or 50 MB, and special characters are properly XML-encoded.

Fix

Re-generate the sitemap using a validated sitemap library. Encode all special characters in URLs (& → &). Split oversized sitemaps into multiple files and reference them from a sitemap index. Resubmit to Google Search Console.