Free Sitemap & Robots.txt Health Checker
Check whether your crawl-discovery files exist, are valid, and do not quietly contradict each other before it costs you indexed pages. Free, one URL, no login.
Most crawl problems are invisible until a page just never shows up
A sitemap that quietly returns a 404. A robots.txt file with a leftover Disallow: / from a staging environment that never got removed. A sitemap that lists pages robots.txt is simultaneously blocking. None of it throws an error you would notice browsing the site yourself, but each one can mean new or updated pages take far longer to get discovered and indexed, or never get crawled at all. For political campaigns and healthcare clients alike, a leftover Disallow rule can silently deindex a page that took weeks of legal or compliance review to get approved.
This free check pulls your /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml at their standard paths and looks for the same crawl-directive conflicts and validity gaps we check on every client site, so you know what to fix before it costs you organic visibility.
- robots.txt disallows a path that the sitemap is actively submitting for indexing — a direct contradiction that confuses crawlers about which rule to trust.
Sample result using example data — enter your own details below to get your real score.
Free Sitemap & Robots.txt Health Checker
Drop in any live homepage URL. We will pull your /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml and check whether they exist, whether they are valid, and whether they quietly contradict each other — free, no login required.
Fetching your robots.txt and sitemap.xml and checking for crawl-directive risk patterns…
The Four Scoring Categories
- Robots.txt Presence & Crawl Access
- Whether robots.txt loads at all, whether it accidentally blocks every crawler from the entire site, and whether it points crawlers to a sitemap.
- Sitemap Presence & Validity
- Whether a sitemap is discoverable at all, whether it parses as valid XML with a proper root element, and whether it actually lists any entries.
- Crawl-Directive Conflicts
- Whether any URL listed in the sitemap is simultaneously blocked by robots.txt, and whether robots.txt blocks a broad public-content path that doesn't look like an admin or system path.
- Sitemap Freshness & Format Quality
- Whether the sitemap includes lastmod dates crawlers can use to prioritize re-crawling, and whether every URL in it matches the site's real hostname and scheme.
Key Terms
- Robots.txt
- A plain text file at a site's root that tells search engine crawlers which paths they may or may not request. It's a request, not an access-control mechanism — a disallowed page can still get indexed if it's linked from somewhere else on the web.
- XML Sitemap
- A machine-readable file listing a site's canonical URLs so crawlers can discover pages without relying on internal links alone. Required fields are minimal; lastmod, changefreq, and priority are optional extras.
- Crawl Budget
- The amount of time and server capacity a search engine is willing to spend crawling a given site. Matters most on large or fast-changing sites — most small business sites never hit the ceiling.
- Disallow Directive
- A robots.txt rule telling a named (or all) crawler user-agents not to request a specific path. A leftover Disallow from a staging environment is one of the most common causes of pages silently never getting indexed.
- Sitemap Index
- A sitemap that lists other sitemap files rather than pages directly. Used once a site's URL count exceeds a single sitemap's 50,000-URL / 50MB limit.
Sitemap & Robots.txt Health Checker FAQ
Does this crawl my whole site?
No. It checks the two standard crawl-discovery files at their conventional paths, your site's root /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml. It does not crawl every page on your site and does not validate every individual URL listed inside your sitemap.
What exactly does it check?
It checks four things: whether robots.txt loads and doesn't accidentally block your whole site, whether a sitemap is discoverable and parses as valid XML with real entries, whether robots.txt and your sitemap contradict each other, and whether the sitemap includes freshness data and consistent hostnames.
Why would robots.txt and my sitemap ever contradict each other?
It happens more than you'd think. A common cause is a staging or migration leftover, a broad Disallow rule added for a temporary reason that never gets removed, while the sitemap keeps listing those same pages as ones you want indexed. Search engines end up with two directly conflicting signals about the same URL.
Is a missing sitemap really a big deal?
Search engines can still find pages without a sitemap by following links, but a sitemap is the most direct, efficient way to tell them exactly which URLs exist and when they last changed. Without one, new or updated pages can take substantially longer to get discovered, especially on larger or less frequently linked sites.
What if my sitemap is a sitemap index instead of a list of pages?
That's normal and common on larger WordPress and WooCommerce sites, where the main sitemap.xml is really an index pointing to separate sub-sitemaps for posts, pages, and products. This tool recognizes that pattern and does not penalize it for missing freshness dates that actually live inside those sub-sitemaps.
Is this really free?
Yes. Enter a URL and your email, and you get your results immediately. No credit card and no sales call required to see your score.
What if my score comes back as high risk?
A high-risk score usually points to a specific, fixable gap, most often a sitewide block left over from a staging environment or a sitemap that isn't discoverable at all. Your results include a plain-English list of what was flagged in each category, and you are welcome to book a free strategy call if you want help prioritizing fixes.
Resources & References
Further reading on sitemap and robots.txt best practices, straight from the source:
Built and reviewed by Chris Goodman, CEO of Tridigiam
Founder of a Las Vegas marketing agency building AI-visibility and compliance-aware marketing systems for regulated industries — healthcare, addiction treatment, and aesthetics. LinkedIn
Related Free Tools
Sitemap and robots.txt health are the foundation everything else in technical SEO sits on top of.
- URL Canonicalization & Redirect Consistency Checker — a clean sitemap doesn’t help if the URLs inside it redirect inconsistently.
- Broken Link & 404 Quick Scan — a stale sitemap is one of the most common sources of the broken links this tool finds.
- HTTP Security Headers Checker — another quick technical-trust pass worth running in the same session.
Built by an agency that treats technical SEO as table stakes
Tridigiam builds and manages websites for small businesses, healthcare practices, and political campaigns alike, and crawl access is one of the first things we check on every new client site. A clean robots.txt and a valid, conflict-free sitemap are basic infrastructure, not an afterthought.
If your score flags something real, or you just want a second set of eyes on your crawl configuration, a strategy call is free and there is no obligation.
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This is one of Tridigiam’s free diagnostic tools for local, political, and regulated-industry advertisers — AI visibility, schema, ad compliance, GBP, landing page CRO, ad spend waste, and more.