Sitemap Analysis & Generation
Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap
Discover candidates before reporting a sitemap missing:
claude-seo run sitemap_discovery.py <url> --json
The helper reads every bounded Sitemap: declaration in robots.txt, validates
cross-host targets through the shared SSRF-safe fetch layer, and still probes
common paths when a declared sitemap is stale or invalid. Use only entries in
found; preserve declared failures as findings instead of treating a robots.txt
line alone as proof that a sitemap works.
Validation Checks
- Valid XML format
- Per-file limit: ≤50,000 URLs AND ≤50MB uncompressed (whichever is hit first)
- All URLs return HTTP 200
<lastmod> accurate: must be a valid W3C Datetime and reflect the last
significant content change (main content, structured data, links, not
copyright/boilerplate edits). Google only honours <lastmod> when consistently
and verifiably accurate, so warn when values are suspiciously uniform or newer
than the page's real content.- No deprecated tags:
<priority> and <changefreq> are ignored by Google
- Sitemap referenced in robots.txt
- Compare crawled pages vs sitemap; flag missing pages
Quality Signals
- Sitemap index file if >50k URLs
- Split by content type (pages, posts, images, videos)
- No non-canonical URLs in sitemap
- No noindexed URLs in sitemap
- No redirected URLs in sitemap
- HTTPS URLs only (no HTTP)
Common Issues
| Issue | Severity | Fix |
|---|
| >50k URLs in single file | Critical | Split with sitemap index |
| >50MB uncompressed single file | Critical | Split with sitemap index |
| Non-200 URLs | High | Remove or fix broken URLs |
| Noindexed URLs included | High | Remove from sitemap |
| Redirected URLs included | Medium | Update to final URLs |
| All identical lastmod | Low | Use actual modification dates |
| Priority/changefreq used | Info | Can remove (ignored by Google) |
Extension sitemaps (image / video / news)
Google documents three subtypes with their own rules, validate per-subtype:
- Image (
http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1): only two valid
tags remain, <image:image> and <image:loc> (max 1,000 <image:image>
per <url>). <image:caption>/<image:geo_location>/<image:title>/
<image:license> were deprecated (2022), flag as info-level removable.
- Video: required
<video:video> with <video:thumbnail_loc>,
<video:title>, <video:description>, plus <video:content_loc> or
<video:player_loc>; mRSS also supported. Flag deprecated/removed tags
(<video:category>, <video:gallery_loc>, <video:price>, <video:tvshow>,
player autoplay/allow_embed) as info-level removable; recheck Google docs before citing a removal date.
- News: max 1,000
<news:news> per file (not 50,000); include only
articles from the last 2 days; required <news:publication>/<news:name>/
<news:language>/<news:publication_date>/<news:title>; submit/discover through
Search Console or robots.txt/sitemap index; use Publisher Center only for
publication management where relevant. When the news: namespace is detected, override the generic
50k check with the 1,000 cap.
Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap
Process
- Ask for business type (or auto-detect from existing site)
- Load industry template from
../seo-plan/assets/ directory
- Interactive structure planning with user
- Apply quality gates:
- ⚠️ WARNING at 30+ location pages (require 60%+ unique content)
- 🛑 HARD STOP at 50+ location pages (require justification)
- Generate valid XML output
- Split at whichever comes first: 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, with sitemap index
- Generate STRUCTURE.md documentation
Safe Programmatic Pages (OK at scale)
✅ Integration pages (with real setup docs)
✅ Template/tool pages (with downloadable content)
✅ Glossary pages (200+ word definitions)
✅ Product pages (unique specs, reviews)
✅ User profile pages (user-generated content)
Penalty Risk (avoid at scale)
❌ Location pages with only city name swapped
❌ "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value
❌ "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data
❌ AI-generated pages without human review and unique value
Sitemap Format
Standard Sitemap
<?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>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>
Sitemap Index (for >50k URLs)
<?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>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
Error Handling
- URL unreachable: Report the HTTP status code and suggest checking if the site is live
- No sitemap found: Run
sitemap_discovery.py and report "not found" only
when its found list is empty after declared and common candidates are checked
- Invalid XML format: Report specific parsing errors with line numbers
- Rate limiting detected: Back off and report partial results with a note about retry timing
Output
For Analysis
VALIDATION-REPORT.md: analysis results- Issues list with severity
- Recommendations
For Generation
sitemap.xml (or split files with index)STRUCTURE.md: site architecture documentation- URL count and organization summary