/dm:sitemap

Purpose

Analyze existing XML sitemaps for issues and opportunities, or generate new sitemaps with industry-specific templates and best practices.

Modes

Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap (/dm:sitemap [URL])

Provide a sitemap URL (e.g., https://example.com/sitemap.xml) to audit:

1. Fetch and parse: Download sitemap XML, detect sitemap index vs single sitemap
2. URL count: Total URLs, URLs per sitemap file (flag if approaching 50K protocol limit)
3. lastmod audit: Check for presence, format (W3C datetime), staleness (>6 months without update), fake lastmod (all same date)
4. Priority and changefreq: Check for deprecated/ignored signals (Google ignores both — flag if present, recommend removal to reduce file size)
5. URL health: Sample 20-50 URLs and check HTTP status codes — flag 404s, 301s, 302s, 5xx errors
6. Indexation alignment: Cross-reference with robots.txt and meta robots — flag noindexed URLs in sitemap, flag sitemap URLs blocked by robots.txt
7. Missing URLs: Compare sitemap against site crawl or provided URL list — identify pages missing from sitemap
8. Image/video/news sitemaps: Check for specialized sitemap extensions
9. Compression: Check if sitemap is gzip compressed (recommended for large sitemaps)
10. robots.txt registration: Verify sitemap is declared in robots.txt

Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap (/dm:sitemap generate)

Generate a sitemap plan or actual XML:

1. Discover site structure: Crawl from homepage or use provided URL list
2. Categorize pages: Group by type (homepage, category, product, blog, landing, legal)
3. Apply industry template: Use appropriate structure based on business model (SaaS, ecommerce, local, publisher, agency)
4. Set lastmod: Use actual page modification dates, not generation date
5. Split strategy: Plan sitemap index structure if >50K URLs or >50MB uncompressed
6. Exclude rules: Noindexed pages, paginated results, faceted URLs, utility pages (login, cart, search results)
7. Generate XML: Produce valid XML sitemap following the sitemap protocol (sitemaps.org)

Industry Templates

SaaS

• Homepage, features, pricing, integrations, docs, blog, changelog, about, legal
• Integration pages as separate sitemap (if 50+)
• Blog with high update frequency

eCommerce

• Homepage, categories, products, brands, collections, blog, about, legal
• Product sitemap (largest — split if needed)
• Image sitemap for product photos
• Category pages with canonical handling for filtered views

Local Business

• Homepage, services, locations, about, contact, blog, reviews, legal
• Location pages as separate sitemap (if multi-location)
• Service area pages

Publisher/Media

• Homepage, sections, articles, authors, topics, about, legal
• News sitemap (for Google News inclusion)
• Video sitemap (if video content)
• High-frequency article sitemap updates

Agency

• Homepage, services, case studies, blog, team, about, contact, legal
• Case study sitemap
• Industry/vertical landing pages

Sitemap Protocol Reference

<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Sitemap Index (for multiple sitemaps)

<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-blog.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-03-28</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Protocol Limits

• 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
• 50MB uncompressed per sitemap file
• Unlimited sitemap files in a sitemap index
• Must use absolute URLs
• UTF-8 encoding required
• Entity escaping for special characters (& ' " > <)

Output

Sitemap Analysis Report

• Total URLs indexed, health status breakdown
• Issues found with severity (critical/high/medium/low)
• Missing pages that should be in the sitemap
• Recommendations sorted by impact

Sitemap Generation Output

• Complete XML sitemap(s) or sitemap plan
• Sitemap index if multiple files needed
• robots.txt sitemap declaration line
• Submission instructions for Google Search Console

Agents Used

• seo-specialist — Sitemap analysis, URL health checks, architecture recommendations

Scripts Used

• tech-seo-auditor.py — URL health checking (status codes, redirects)