---
title: "Sitemap available · Sitebulb Labs"
description: "A sitemap gives agents a list of the pages worth reading or indexing."
url: https://labs.sitebulb.com/docs/checks/discoverability/sitemap/
---

# Sitemap available

A sitemap gives agents a list of the pages worth reading or indexing.

- Category

  [Discoverability](https://labs.sitebulb.com/docs/checks/discoverability)

- Standard

  Established

## What it checks

The extension first looks for `Sitemap:` lines in `robots.txt`. If there are none, it fetches `/sitemap.xml` and checks that the body contains a `<urlset>` or `<sitemapindex>` element. A sitemap saves an agent from having to discover pages by following links.

## Results

| Status   | When                                                                                            |
| -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Pass** | `robots.txt` declares one or more sitemaps                                                      |
| **Pass** | `/sitemap.xml` exists but is not declared in `robots.txt` (with a recommendation to declare it) |
| **Fail** | No sitemap is declared in `robots.txt` and `/sitemap.xml` was not found                         |

## How to fix

Publish an XML sitemap and reference it from `robots.txt`, so agents find it without guessing the path:

```txt
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
```

A sitemap index works too, if you split your sitemap into several files:

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

See also [robots.txt present & valid](https://labs.sitebulb.com/docs/checks/discoverability/robots-txt) and [Sitemap freshness (lastmod)](https://labs.sitebulb.com/docs/checks/discoverability/sitemap-lastmod).