Sitemap Availability

Sitemap Availability checks whether your site serves a valid XML sitemap that AI crawlers can fetch. That sitemap is the machine-readable map of your URLs, and systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity use it to find your pages. friendly4AI scores the parameter from 100 (a <sitemapindex> or a sitemap with 1000+ URLs) down to 0 (no sitemap found, or a discovered sitemap URL that turns out to be inaccessible).

What does this parameter measure?

It measures whether a working XML sitemap is reachable on your site. friendly4AI fetches https://{domain}/sitemap.xml, follows any sitemap references it finds during discovery, and validates that the file is a real <urlset> or <sitemapindex>. When nothing can be fetched, the scan falls back to the homepage HTML and looks for a <link rel="sitemap"> tag, an href ending in sitemap*.xml, or a plain text mention of "sitemap". Along the way it reads <lastmod> dates and counts how many fall inside a 90-day freshness window.

Why does a sitemap matter for AI-readiness?

Without a sitemap, AI crawlers see only the pages your homepage links to. Anything deep or unlinked never reaches the index that ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity draw on. A sitemap hands crawlers the full URL map up front, so coverage improves and new pages surface sooner. Accurate <lastmod> dates do extra work here: they tell AI systems which pages changed recently and deserve a re-fetch. Sitemaps work alongside robots.txt accessibility and URL stability as the core discovery signals.

How is Sitemap Availability scored?

Under the v4.5 methodology, this Discovery parameter runs on a five-tier scale. The published rubric collapses those tiers into Pass, Partial, and Fail.

• Pass covers the top two tiers. A fetched, valid sitemap with 10 or more URLs scores 75. A comprehensive sitemap — either a <sitemapindex> or one holding more than 1000 URLs — scores 100. A sitemap that is explicitly linked from the page but not fetched directly also scores 75 and passes.
• Partial covers the middle. A valid sitemap with fewer than 10 URLs, or a fetched file in a non-standard or invalid format, scores 50. A page that only mentions "sitemap" in text with no actionable link scores 25.
• Fail is the bottom tier, 0: no sitemap signals at all, or a sitemap URL that was discovered but came back inaccessible.

How do you fix Sitemap Availability issues?

• Publish a valid sitemap.xml at your site root that lists every important page. Most platforms — WordPress, Shopify, Next.js — generate one for you.
• Confirm the file returns well-formed XML with a <urlset> or <sitemapindex> root. A malformed file scores Partial even when it exists.
• Keep your sitemap at a non-standard path? Point to it from robots.txt with Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml so discovery can find it.
• Add accurate <lastmod> dates and keep them current. Recent dates strengthen the freshness signal.
• On large sites, split the sitemap into a <sitemapindex> of child sitemaps to reach the comprehensive tier.
• Re-scan after publishing to confirm the file is fetched and validates.