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Empty sitemap

sitemaps.sitemap_empty
Priority
Low
Severity
Warning

What we look for

These sitemap files (files that list a site's pages for search engines) list no addresses at all.

Why it matters

Search engines reject an empty sitemap, so it does nothing to help them find your pages.

How to fix

Fill the sitemap with the pages you want found, through your CMS or SEO plugin, or remove the reference to it from robots.txt and from any sitemap index (a sitemap that lists other sitemaps).

Where you’ll see it

The id is stable, and every surface uses it, so it’s the thing to search for or hand to an agent.

Terminal
When it is one of the five findings under Fix first, raptor crawl prints the id under it.
Check: sitemaps.sitemap_empty
crawl.json and the CSV
The crawl JSON names the finding by this id, and so do the CSV and raptor_query.
"check_id": "sitemaps.sitemap_empty"
The HTML report
This link opens the finding in the report, and each finding shows its id.
crawl.html#finding=sitemaps.sitemap_empty
MCP
raptor_findings with this check_id returns the finding in full, with a fix brief ready to paste into a task. If it didn’t fire, it says why.
raptor_findings {
  "job_id": "...",
  "check_id": "sitemaps.sitemap_empty"
}