sitemap.xml is published

sitemap.xml is the universal answer to "what URLs exist on this site". Agents and search engines both use it as the seed list for crawling, and the a14y crawler will use it as the first source of pages to score.

site Discoverability impl 1.0.0 sitemap-xml.exists

How the check decides

The check sends GET /sitemap.xml, then falls back to /sitemap_index.xml and /sitemap-index.xml. It passes if any of those return a 2xx response. It fails if none do.

How to implement it

Serve a sitemap at the root of your site. Most static site generators (Astro, Next.js, Hugo, Jekyll, Docusaurus) have built-in sitemap plugins. If you’re rolling your own, the format is well-specified and short.

Pass

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/docs/install</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-04-01</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Fail

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found