New content waits in line
When a sitemap returns 404 or 5xx, Google falls back to what it already knows. Published and updated pages are discovered on the crawler’s schedule, not yours.
Sitemap monitoring
Danger
A sitemap Google can’t read stops new pages from being found
Sitemaps are how you hand search engines the list of URLs you want crawled. When one breaks, the Sitemap: line still sits in robots.txt and the site still loads — the only symptom is slower indexing, weeks later.
Danger severity: you get the alert within the hour, not in tomorrow's digest.
What it may cost you
Nothing on the site breaks. Your newest pages simply wait far longer to be discovered.
One broken tag voids the whole file
A missing XML declaration or a structure that fails protocol validation can make a crawler reject the entire sitemap — not just the bad line. Every URL inside goes unsubmitted.
Growth pushes URLs past the cap
The protocol stops at 50 MB and 50,000 URLs. Generators rarely warn you when a file crosses the line, and the entries that fall off the end are usually the newest.
How an alert reaches you
Three steps, running every day, on something nobody looks at twice a year.
1
Every run
Baseline stored
The first crawl saves every sitemap declared in your robots.txt as it should be. That value is what every later run is compared against.
2
Next morning
Change detected
Each sitemap and every child of a sitemap index is requested, parsed against the sitemaps.org protocol and measured.
3
Within the hour
Alert in your inbox
Danger-level findings go out right after the crawl batch. Milder ones wait for the daily digest, so the urgent one stands out.
You decide what counts as broken
The stored value is your desired state, not a guess. When a later run differs you get both versions side by side — and if the change was intentional, one click adopts it as the new baseline.
Severity matches the damage
This one reaches you within the hour, because the damage starts before the next digest would arrive. Every test's severity can be overridden per site, so your inbox stays useful.
Set it once, then leave it
Pick the frequency and the user agent Wygard should send, switch on JS rendering if your pages need it, and the rest needs no attention.
What we check
Three checks run against every sitemap declared in robots.txt, including each child of a sitemap index.
| Test | What it catches | Scope | Severity |
|---|---|---|---|
| SitemapGroup — status code | A sitemap that was 200 now returns 404 or 5xx, or a child of the index is unreachable. |
Web · Basic | Danger |
| SitemapGroup — validity & format | A malformed XML declaration, or a file that fails sitemaps.org protocol validation. | Web · Basic | Danger |
| SitemapGroup — size & limit | The file passes 50 MB or 50,000 <loc> entries, so the tail may stop being read. |
Web · Basic | Heads-up |
Questions about sitemap monitoring
What the checks do, and what they don’t.
Which sitemaps does Wygard check
Every sitemap your robots.txt declares, plus each child sitemap referenced by a sitemap index.
What if I move a sitemap to a new path
Update the Sitemap: line in robots.txt. The robots.txt live sitemap check catches the case where the file moved but the old URL is still declared.
Does Wygard check every URL inside the sitemap
No. These checks confirm the sitemap itself is reachable, parseable and within the protocol limits. Individual URLs are watched by the per-URL tests you add.
“This app has completely transformed how we manage our SEO. The real-time alerts ensure we never miss an issue. It's a game-changer for protecting our rankings!”
Why Wygard?
Trust, but verify. You build the site — Wygard makes sure your key SEO elements work as intended.
Your SEO protected
How quickly would you notice if your canonical tags changed? We catch it for you.
Time saved
Don't waste time on massive crawls and endless data. With 15 years of hands-on SEO experience, we know how to focus on what really matters.
Easy to Use
You don't have to be an SEO expert — your site still deserves expert monitoring. That's exactly what our tool delivers.
Single site or the whole portfolio? We can handle all today
Every online business deserves protection. No matter the size.