Crystal Ball checks covered

SITEMAP_MISSING, SITEMAP_NOT_FOUND, sitemap crawl hints

What the flag means

Crystal Ball may flag sitemap issues when it cannot find a sitemap, when the sitemap URL is missing from robots.txt, or when the sitemap does not appear useful for discovering important pages.

This is a problem because sitemaps help crawlers find your preferred public URLs. They do not force rankings, but they do reduce guesswork.

Common causes

Common causes include no sitemap file, a sitemap in the wrong location, unpublished CMS pages, no robots.txt reference, old URLs, redirected sitemap entries, or pages excluded by noindex settings.

How to fix it

  • Custom HTML/static: Create a sitemap.xml with canonical public URLs and reference it in robots.txt. Google’s sitemap overview explains when sitemaps help.
  • WordPress: WordPress and SEO plugins often generate sitemaps automatically. Check /wp-sitemap.xml or your SEO plugin’s sitemap URL.
  • Shopify: Shopify automatically generates a sitemap at /sitemap.xml. Check that important products, collections, pages, and blogs are published and indexable.
  • Wix: Wix creates a sitemap automatically for published sites. Wix’s SEO dashboard and indexing settings help confirm which pages are included.
  • Webflow: Enable sitemap generation in Site settings or upload a custom sitemap if needed. Webflow can generate and submit sitemap URLs for hosted sites.

Need help?

If the fix gets murky, visit Support and send the details. Bug reports and Crystal Ball questions are free support. Implementation and development work may be paid support, but we will tell you clearly before anything becomes paid. No surprise invoices from the tower.