Sitemap coverage

What this check looks for

This site-wide check compares crawled, indexable pages (2xx status, no noindex directive) against the URLs listed in the discovered sitemap. If no sitemap was found at all, it fails outright. If a sitemap exists but is missing some indexable pages, it warns, listing each missing page. Full coverage of all indexable pages passes; a scan where sitemap discovery didn't run reports "na".

Why it matters

A sitemap is the clearest, most direct way to tell search engines "here is the complete list of URLs I want indexed" — pages left out of it rely entirely on being discovered through internal links or external backlinks instead, which is slower and less reliable, especially for a large or deep site. Missing sitemap coverage often signals a structural gap: a whole content type generated after the sitemap was last configured, or a section excluded by an overly broad sitemap-generation rule. AI crawlers that use sitemaps as a starting point for efficient discovery hit the same gap, so pages absent from the sitemap are systematically less likely to be found and cited by either kind of crawler.

How to fix it

Add the missing URLs to the sitemap, ideally by fixing the generator so new pages are included automatically:

<url>
  <loc>https://www.acme.com/audio/headphones/wireless-nc</loc>
  <lastmod>2026-07-19</lastmod>
</url>

If your sitemap is dynamically generated, verify it queries the same content source that publishes new pages, so additions to the site are reflected in the sitemap without a manual step.