Do you want to analyze the sitemap(s) of your site?
We detail below the questions to ask and the corrections that need to be made if necessary.
If you are still not sure what this file is for and how to implement it, please refer to this article.
Check for sitemaps’ presence
On the Google Search Console, go to "Sitemaps" on the right, then consult the sitemaps’ list displayed
The list displays the names and types, the sent and last read dates, as well as the discovered URLs’ status and number:
If there are one or more sitemaps displayed:
Check the information.
If some URLs have errors instead of "Operation done": check with your technical team to see what is wrong and how to fix it.
If the URLs’ number discovered do not match: open the sitemap with the URL indicated on the "Sitemap" column on the far left, then check if the count is correct.
==> Check that the URLs present in the sitemap(s) are not deindexed (robots noindex meta tag) or blocked by the robots.txt. In this case, remove them from the sitemap.
==> Then, check that the URLs in the sitemap(s) are up to date. As the sitemap is not mandatory for indexing, it’s not a problem if it is not updated. However, you shouldn't wait too long and try to keep it up to date as much as possible. This makes it much easier to spot indexed pages that are not in the sitemap, and therefore to control the website’ indexing.
If there is no sitemap sent:
Check with your technical team if there is not an undeclared sitemap.
You can also test yourself by searching in your browser: "mydomain.com/sitemap.xml", but it’s not a guaranteed test because the sitemap can have another name, and you could have more than one.
If your technical team answers negatively: if a website has more than 5,000 pages, we recommend that you add a sitemap to indicate to Google the pages’ crawl priority, and to keep track of your indexed pages.
You can create multiple sitemaps: by language, by product category, etc.
If you’ve got a smaller site, you can also create one: the main point here is to have a clear valid URL report and track indexing. It can also allow pages to be discovered faster if you are creating pages and the website is still very recent.
Check out similar articles:
The Google Search Console coverage report:
Have you found your answer?