How to inspect an XML sitemap index and its child sitemaps

Identify the document type

A sitemap index has a <sitemapindex> root and contains one <sitemap> element for each child sitemap. A normal URL-set sitemap has a <urlset> root and contains page URLs. Treating one as the other can hide failed child documents.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-11-01</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap-resources.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-11-03</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

The namespace, <sitemapindex>, <sitemap> and <loc> structure must be correct. <lastmod> is optional and should represent a meaningful child-sitemap change rather than the time every request was served.

Inspect the index response

1. Request the exact sitemap index URL and record its final status after redirects.
2. Confirm that the response is XML and parses without truncation or injected HTML.
3. Verify the root element and sitemap namespace.
4. Review every child <loc> for the intended scheme, hostname and path.
5. Check that dates use a supported W3C date or datetime format when present.

A 200 response alone is not enough. Some error pages and CDN challenges return HTTP 200 with non-sitemap content.

Follow the bounded child-sitemap sample

Open the Sitemap Explorer with the index URL. Scopeva follows a bounded number of child documents, reports each document’s status and type, lists detected children, and samples URL entries.

For each child, inspect:

• Final HTTP status and redirect behavior.
• Whether it is another index or a URL-set sitemap.
• XML parse errors or unexpected document content.
• Number of entries and any bounded-traversal warning.
• Sample URLs and lastmod values.

Depth starts at 0 for the submitted document. Scopeva fetches direct children at depth 1 and grandchildren at depth 2; it can report deeper references discovered in a depth-2 document but does not fetch them. A run is also limited to 12 documents and 10,000 parsed entries per document. A successful sample is not proof that every sitemap or URL in a large set is valid.

Review the listed URLs

Child URL-set sitemaps should list canonical, index-intended absolute URLs. Look for old protocols, staging hosts, redirected URLs, duplicate variants, soft-404 pages and URLs blocked from crawling. An accurate sitemap should reinforce the site’s canonical architecture rather than preserve every historical route.

Use lastmod only when it reflects a substantive page change. Updating every value on every build can make the signal less useful.

Common problems

• A child sitemap returns 404, 403 or a temporary server error.
• A CDN redirects XML requests to a login or challenge page.
• The index contains malformed XML or an incorrect namespace.
• Child locations use the wrong hostname or protocol.
• A child sitemap redirects through avoidable hops.
• URL-set entries are non-canonical, redirected or not intended for indexing.
• lastmod values are inaccurate or regenerated without content changes.

Limitations

A sitemap is a discovery signal, not an indexing command. A valid index does not guarantee that a search engine will crawl or index every listed URL. Scopeva does not perform a complete website crawl; it inspects a bounded sitemap graph and sample data returned during the check.