Hear about a broken or shrinking sitemap before search engines do
SEOComet reads your sitemaps and sitemap indexes every 6 hours by default, counts their URLs and lastmod dates, and alerts you when one goes missing, stops parsing, loses URLs or stops updating.
What it catches
Sitemaps fail quietly. A plugin update writes broken XML, a cache serves an HTML page in the sitemap's place, or a deploy drops half the URLs. These are the issues SEOComet raises.
| Issue | Severity | What it means |
|---|---|---|
Sitemap missing sitemap.not_found | Critical | The sitemap address answers 404 or 410, so search engines can't read it either. |
Sitemap can't be read sitemap.invalid_xml | Critical | The file isn't valid XML, or its root is neither urlset nor sitemapindex. A plugin update, or a cache serving an HTML page instead, are the usual causes. |
Sitemap is empty sitemap.empty | Critical | The sitemap was read correctly but lists no URLs at all, which usually means a build or plugin failed. |
Fewer URLs in the sitemap sitemap.url_count_dropped | WarningCritical Critical past twice your threshold | The sitemap lists far fewer URLs than on the last complete check. The threshold starts at a 30% drop and you can change it. |
A child sitemap failed sitemap.child_failed | Warning | A sitemap index lists other sitemaps, and at least one of them couldn't be fetched or read. Its URLs may drop out of search. |
Sitemap looks stale sitemap.stale | Info | The newest lastmod date is older than your limit (30 days to start with), so the sitemap may have stopped updating. |
How it reads a sitemap
SEOComet fetches the sitemap, checks the XML, and counts the URLs and the newest
lastmod. It never visits the URLs themselves, and it doesn’t store the
file, only the counts and dates.
For a sitemap index it fetches the child sitemaps one at a time, up to 200 per check unless you change that. If a child fails, or the check runs out of time or reaches the cap, the count is marked incomplete. Only complete counts are compared, so a slow night doesn’t look like a lost half of your site.
Sitemaps can be up to 50 MB each and get 30 seconds to load.
- Where sitemaps come from
-
The
Sitemap:lines in robots.txt for your domain and its subdomains, or/sitemap.xmlwhen there are none. Add any other sitemap by hand. - URL count drop
- A warning past 30%, critical past 60%. Set your own threshold per sitemap.
- Stale after
- 30 days without a newer lastmod. Raise it for a site that rarely changes.
- Check interval
- Every 6 hours by default, down to your plan’s minimum.
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