To find a website's sitemap, open the site's robots.txt file (example.com/robots.txt) and look for a line starting with Sitemap:, which points straight to it. If there isn't one, try example.com/sitemap.xml, and on WordPress sites example.com/wp-sitemap.xml, which WordPress has created by default since version 5.5.
Robots.txt first is the trick most guides skip. Google's own documentation tells site owners to add a Sitemap line to robots.txt so crawlers can find it, so it's the one place a sitemap is most likely to be announced, whatever the platform.
Step by step: find any site's sitemap
- Type the domain followed by /robots.txt into your browser, such as example.com/robots.txt.
- Look for one or more lines beginning Sitemap: followed by a full URL. Open that URL.
- No Sitemap line? Try example.com/sitemap.xml.
- If it's a WordPress site, try example.com/wp-sitemap.xml.
- If the site uses an SEO plugin, the plugin's own sitemap may replace the WordPress one, so check both.
- Still nothing? Search Google for site:example.com filetype:xml to surface any XML files Google has indexed.
- If it's your own site, open Search Console's Sitemaps report to see which sitemaps were submitted and when Google last read them.
Where sitemaps usually live
| Platform or setup | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Any site | The Sitemap: line in /robots.txt |
| Many custom and hosted sites | /sitemap.xml |
| WordPress 5.5 and later, no SEO plugin | /wp-sitemap.xml (a sitemap index) |
| WordPress with Yoast SEO | Yoast settings, Technical SEO, then View the XML sitemap |
| Large sites | A sitemap index that links to several smaller sitemaps |
| Sites with a blog feed | Sometimes the RSS or Atom feed is submitted as the sitemap |
WordPress's core team announced in 2020 that version 5.5 would expose a sitemap index at /wp-sitemap.xml listing all the site's sitemap pages. Yoast's help page adds a useful clue: if a WordPress site's sitemap sits at /sitemap.xml, it isn't Yoast's. It'll be from another plugin, WordPress itself or a physical file.
Reading a sitemap once you've found it
Sitemaps come in a few shapes. A sitemap index is a list of other sitemaps, often split by type (posts, pages, categories, products). Click into each one to see the URLs. Google says every sitemap format is limited to 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs, which is why big sites split theirs and use an index.
Most sitemaps open as plain XML in the browser. Some sites style them so they look like a tidy web page, which is just a presentation layer over the same list. If a sitemap is compressed (ending in .gz), download it and open it with any archive tool.
For SEO research, a competitor's sitemap is gold. It shows every page they want indexed, often with last-modified dates, so you can see what they've published recently and which sections they're growing.
Checking a sitemap is healthy
Once you've found a sitemap, especially your own, it's worth a quick health check. Open a few of the URLs listed and make sure they load a normal page. Things to look out for:
- URLs that redirect or return errors. A sitemap should list only final, working addresses.
- Pages you've set to noindex. Listing them sends Google a mixed message.
- Old staging or test URLs that slipped in from a previous build.
- Last-modified dates that change on every page every day, which makes them meaningless.
- Important pages that are missing entirely, often because a plugin setting excludes a content type.
Google's documentation also notes you can submit several sitemaps and sitemap index files, so splitting by section (blog, products, locations) makes problems easier to spot.
Why some sites have no sitemap
A sitemap isn't compulsory. Google says you might not need one if your site is small, which it defines as about 500 pages or fewer that need to be in search, if it's well linked internally so Googlebot can find everything from the homepage, and if you don't have many media or news pages. You might need one if your site is large, new with few external links, or rich in video, images or news.
Structured data is the next check on many audits, so have a look at my guide to testing schema markup.
Sitemap found but pages still not indexed?
Google's documentation is honest about this: submitting a sitemap is a hint, not a guarantee that Google will crawl or index every URL in it. In my experience the bigger lever is internal links. Pages that are linked from other crawled pages on your site get found and indexed far more reliably than pages that exist only in the sitemap. If you need to build or fix one, I explain the process in how to create an XML sitemap.
Want AI doing the heavy lifting in your marketing?
I build the systems that handle the boring 80 percent, so you get your week back. Done properly, with the human kept in.
Submitting your own sitemap
- Add it in Search Console's Sitemaps report.
- Add a Sitemap: line anywhere in your robots.txt with the full URL. Google says it'll find it the next time it crawls the file.
- Use the full, exact URL, including https and www if your site uses them. Google says it doesn't assume or check http, https, www or non-www alternates for the robots.txt Sitemap line.
Site audit tools crawl your sitemap and flag URLs in it that redirect, error or are blocked. If you're choosing one, my list of SE Ranking alternatives covers suites with that feature.
My verdict
Check robots.txt first, then /sitemap.xml, then /wp-sitemap.xml for WordPress. That finds the sitemap on the vast majority of sites in under a minute, with no tools and no login. And if it's your own site, remember the sitemap only helps Google find pages; your internal links are what convince it they matter.
After you've found the sitemap, I'd test the old URLs too, as I describe in my guide to checking redirects.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find the sitemap of any website?
Open the site's robots.txt and look for a Sitemap: line. If there isn't one, try /sitemap.xml, and /wp-sitemap.xml on WordPress sites.
Where is the sitemap on a WordPress site?
WordPress 5.5 and later creates a sitemap index at /wp-sitemap.xml. SEO plugins such as Yoast can replace it with their own, which you can open from the plugin's settings.
Does every website have a sitemap?
No. Google says small, well-linked sites of about 500 pages or fewer may not need one.
What is the maximum size of a sitemap?
Google says a single sitemap is limited to 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs. Larger sites use a sitemap index.
Does submitting a sitemap guarantee indexing?
No. Google calls it a hint. Internal links from crawled pages do more to get pages found and indexed.
