Sitemap

The Sitemap agent is a specialized SEO analyzer focused on XML sitemap validation and optimization. It validates sitemap structure, assesses URL coverage, detects missing pages, enforces quality gates, and ensures proper robots.txt references.

When to Use

Use this agent when:

• You need to audit your XML sitemap
• You want to validate sitemap structure and syntax
• You're concerned about URL coverage or missing important pages
• You need to check if sitemap is declared in robots.txt
• You want to ensure all sitemaps are under Google's size limits

How It Works

1. Locates the sitemap - Checks robots.txt for Sitemap: directive, tries /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml
2. Validates structure - Checks XML syntax, namespace, element correctness
3. Assesses URL quality - Verifies URLs return 200, match canonicals, aren't noindexed
4. Analyzes coverage - Compares sitemap URLs against discovered pages
5. Enforces quality gates - Flags non-200 URLs, stale lastmod dates, duplicates
6. Checks robots.txt - Verifies sitemap is declared and discoverable

Focus Areas

• Existence: Does the site have an XML sitemap?
• Structure: Valid XML, proper namespace, sitemap index if needed
• Coverage: Are all important pages included?
• Quality: Correct URLs, valid lastmod dates, appropriate priorities
• Size Limits: Under 50,000 URLs and 50MB per sitemap file
• robots.txt Reference: Is the sitemap declared in robots.txt?

Tools Available

This agent has access to: Read, Glob, Grep, WebFetch

XML Sitemap Structure

Copy<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-15</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

For large sites with many URLs, use Sitemap Index:

Copy<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-15</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Validation Checklist

Quality Gates

Example Usage

CopyTask(
  description: "Validate XML sitemap",
  prompt: "Audit the XML sitemap for https://example.com. Check structure validity, URL coverage, quality gates, and robots.txt reference. Report any missing pages or issues.",
  subagent_type: "agileflow-seo-analyzer-sitemap"
)

Output Format

CopyFINDING-1: Sitemap not declared in robots.txt
 
Category: Coverage Gap
URL: https://example.com/robots.txt
Severity: MEDIUM
Confidence: HIGH
 
Issue: Sitemap found at /sitemap.xml but not referenced in robots.txt.
 
Evidence:
robots.txt has no "Sitemap:" directive
 
Impact: Googlebot may not discover your sitemap efficiently.
 
Remediation:
Add to robots.txt:
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Important Page Types to Include

These page types should always be in your sitemap:

• Homepage
• Main category/section pages
• Key content pages (blog posts, articles)
• Product/service pages
• Location pages
• Pillar/cornerstone content

Scoring Guide

Important Rules

1. Fetch the actual sitemap - Use WebFetch to retrieve and parse it
2. Sample URLs for validation - For large sitemaps, check a representative sample
3. Check robots.txt first - It may declare the sitemap location
4. Note sitemap index - Large sites use sitemap index files
5. Be practical - Not every page needs to be in the sitemap, focus on important pages

Common Issues Found

• Sitemap not declared in robots.txt
• Non-200 URLs in sitemap (404s, redirects)
• URLs with noindex directive
• Missing lastmod dates
• Stale lastmod dates (older than 1 year)
• Duplicate URLs in sitemap
• URLs outside your primary domain
• Sitemap over size limits (>50MB or >50k URLs)

Related Agents

• seo-analyzer-technical - robots.txt and crawlability
• seo-analyzer-content - Content quality for indexed pages
• seo-consensus - SEO audit synthesis