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Unreachable sitemap

sitemaps.sitemap_unreachable
Priority
Low
Severity
Warning

What we look for

These sitemaps (files listing a site's pages for search engines) are named in robots.txt (the site's crawling rules) or in another sitemap, but did not answer 200 OK, failed to load or held no sitemap.

Why it matters

Search engines that follow the same reference are likely to fail the same way, so pages listed only in these files are harder for them to find.

How to fix

Point the Sitemap: line in robots.txt, or the entry in the sitemap index (a sitemap that lists other sitemaps), at an address that serves the sitemap. Otherwise remove the stale reference.

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_unreachable
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_unreachable"
The HTML report
This link opens the finding in the report, and each finding shows its id.
crawl.html#finding=sitemaps.sitemap_unreachable
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_unreachable"
}