No sitemap is discoverable
A sitemap tells search engines which pages exist and when they changed, rather than leaving them to discover everything by following links.
Why it matters
A sitemap tells search engines which pages exist and when they changed, rather than leaving them to discover everything by following links. Without one, pages that are not linked prominently — new routes especially — take far longer to appear in search, or never do. Neither `/sitemap.xml` nor a `Sitemap:` line in robots.txt was found, so there is no route by which a crawler could discover one. A sitemap at another path is fine — declare it in robots.txt and it becomes discoverable.
How ShipReady detects it
Launch signals that belong to the ORIGIN: whether unknown routes return a real 404, whether robots.txt and sitemap.xml exist, and whether the site has a browser-tab icon. All are single facts about the deployment. Re-probing them per page would issue the same requests once per crawled page to re-learn the same answers. The favicon probe is CONDITIONAL: it is only sent when the homepage declares no icon <link> at all, because a declared icon already answers the question and browsers only fall back to /favicon.ico when nothing is declared. On a site with an icon this check costs nothing extra.
Detection is deterministic. ShipReady reports this only when it observes the condition directly, and prefers to miss a real problem over inventing one. Rule version 1.10.0.
How to fix it
This is the prompt ShipReady puts in your report — written to be pasted straight into Cursor, Claude Code, or whichever assistant built the app.
A 'sitemap.xml' file was not found. Add an XML sitemap to help search engines discover and index your pages efficiently.
Frequently asked questions
- What does "No sitemap is discoverable" mean?
- A sitemap tells search engines which pages exist and when they changed, rather than leaving them to discover everything by following links.
- How serious is it?
- ShipReady rates this low. Worth fixing. Small individually, and they accumulate.
- How do I fix it?
- Paste the fix prompt on this page into Cursor, Claude Code or your AI editor. It is the same prompt ShipReady puts in your report.
- Can I check my own site?
- Yes — ShipReady scans up to ten pages of any public site for free and reports this alongside every other check. The free report lists every issue it finds and shows full evidence and a fix prompt for the critical and high-severity ones; medium and low findings are counted and unlock on Pro.
Related checks
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