sitemap.xml missing

What this means

A sitemap tells search engines which pages exist, when they were last updated, and how to prioritise them. Without one, crawlers discover pages only by following links. Pages that are poorly linked internally may never be indexed, or may take significantly longer to appear in search results.

This check also flags a sitemap that returns 200 but contains invalid XML (no <urlset> or <sitemapindex> element).

How to fix it

Generate a valid sitemap at /sitemap.xml.

Next.js App Router

Create app/sitemap.ts:

import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next'

export default async function sitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
  const posts = await getPublishedPosts()

  const staticPages: MetadataRoute.Sitemap = [
    {
      url: 'https://yourdomain.com',
      lastModified: new Date(),
      changeFrequency: 'weekly',
      priority: 1,
    },
  ]

  const dynamicPages: MetadataRoute.Sitemap = posts.map(post => ({
    url: `https://yourdomain.com/blog/${post.slug}`,
    lastModified: post.updatedAt,
    changeFrequency: 'monthly',
    priority: 0.7,
  }))

  return [...staticPages, ...dynamicPages]
}

Next.js Pages Router

Use the next-sitemap package:

npm install next-sitemap

Create next-sitemap.config.js at the project root:

/** @type {import('next-sitemap').IConfig} */
module.exports = {
  siteUrl: 'https://yourdomain.com',
  generateRobotsTxt: true,
}

Add a postbuild script in package.json:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postbuild": "next-sitemap"
  }
}

SvelteKit

Create a server endpoint at src/routes/sitemap.xml/+server.ts:

import type { RequestHandler } from './$types'

export const GET: RequestHandler = async () => {
  const pages = ['', '/about', '/blog']
  const sitemap = `<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
${pages.map(path => `  <url><loc>https://yourdomain.com${path}</loc></url>`).join('\n')}
</urlset>`

  return new Response(sitemap, {
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/xml' },
  })
}

Nuxt

Install and configure @nuxtjs/sitemap:

npm install @nuxtjs/sitemap

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  modules: ['@nuxtjs/sitemap'],
  site: {
    url: 'https://yourdomain.com',
  },
})

Astro

Install and configure @astrojs/sitemap:

npm install @astrojs/sitemap

import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config'
import sitemap from '@astrojs/sitemap'

export default defineConfig({
  site: 'https://yourdomain.com',
  integrations: [sitemap()],
})

Plain HTML

Create sitemap.xml at the root of your project:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-01-01</lastmod>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/about</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-01-01</lastmod>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Verify the fix

Check that the sitemap is accessible and contains valid XML:

curl https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

The response should be XML containing at least one <url> entry inside a <urlset> element. Re-run orino audit to confirm the check passes.