Publishing checks
Confirm that important public URLs appear in a usable sitemap after a release.
Sitemap validation endpoint
XML Sitemap Checker API
Most sitemap tools stop at parsing the XML. This endpoint fetches every URL the sitemap lists and reports whether it actually works, so a sitemap validator becomes a sitemap error checker. The response always separates discovered URLs from inspected URLs.
Endpoint
POST /v1/sitemap-inspectorA working request
Set your key once in a server-side environment variable, then send a JSON request.
cURL
curl --request POST \
--url "https://api.tooltrace.io/v1/sitemap-inspector" \
--header "X-ToolTrace-Key: ${TOOLTRACE_KEY}" \
--header "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{
"url": "https://example.com/sitemap.xml",
"max_urls": 25,
"summary_only": true
}'Response scope
What the API returns
The response is structured for software, with source evidence kept beside the extracted or inspected data.
- Sitemap discovery method
- XML document findings
- Sitemap index and child document data
- Discovered and inspected URL counts
- Live status, redirect, robots, canonical, and noindex evidence
- Summary-only mode for compact automation
Practical uses
Migration audits
Find old redirects, missing pages, canonical conflicts, and stale sitemap entries after URL changes.
Scheduled monitoring
Track sitemap health with bounded requests and compact summary responses.
Implementation guidance
Use the result with context.
A valid file can still contain bad URLs
XML validation checks document structure. Live inspection checks whether listed pages return useful responses and agree with robots, noindex, redirect, and canonical signals.
Fix errors, blocked URLs, noindex conflicts, and canonical mismatches before lower-priority formatting warnings.
Read the scope fields
The API can inspect only a bounded number of URLs in one request. Always read discovered_urls, inspected_urls, inspection_complete, and limit_reason before treating a report as complete.
Finding broken URLs in a sitemap
A sitemap should list URLs that return 200. Entries returning 404 or 410 advertise deleted pages to search engines, and entries returning 301 or 302 mean the sitemap lists the redirect rather than its destination. Filter results on status_code and redirect_count to find both.
Server errors may be intermittent. Re-check a 5xx before removing the URL from a sitemap.
Checking a sitemap index
Point the endpoint at a domain or an index file and it reads the index, then its child documents. The documents array reports the type, status, entry count, and size of every sitemap document read.
Large sites split sitemaps across children. Check the index first to enumerate them, then check each child separately.
Noindex and canonical conflicts return 200
The most damaging sitemap problems look healthy. A page carrying noindex, a canonical pointing at a different URL, or a robots.txt rule blocking a submitted URL all return a normal status code.
The technically_indexable field collapses those signals into one verdict when you need a decision rather than the underlying evidence.
Authentication, limits, and errors
Send your key through the X-ToolTrace-Key header from server-side code. Read credit and rate-limit headers after every request. Validation, blocked destination, authentication, plan, and upstream fetch errors use structured responses that applications should handle by code rather than message text.
Use a dedicated key for each environment. Review current fields in the interactive API reference and compare usage limits on the pricing page.