SEO finding
The sitemap lists files that are not pages, or URLs on another origin
SEO Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit XML sitemaps. Finding id: seo.sitemapEntryNotPageOrOrigin.
What it costs you
Entries that cannot be used make the sitemap a less reliable list of what to index.
What to do
List only pages and documents of the sitemap's own scheme and host.
What it checks
- Sitemap lists files that are not pages
- Sitemap lists another website
How to fix it
Generate the sitemap from pages and documents only
- Find which source in the sitemap generator adds these files: an attachment or media type, a folder of assets, a feed.
- Exclude that type from the sitemap, or limit the generator to HTML pages and documents.
- List images and videos with the image or video sitemap extension of the page that shows them, if you want them found.
How to check: Fetch the sitemap: no stylesheets, scripts, data files or images in <loc>. Run this rule again.
List each host's URLs in its own sitemap
- If the entries use http while the sitemap is on https (or the other way round), make the generator write the site's canonical scheme and host.
- If they are on another host you run, move them to a sitemap on that host and name it in that host's robots.txt.
- If you want to keep one sitemap for several hosts, add a Sitemap: line with the address of this sitemap to the robots.txt of each of those hosts.
How to check: Fetch the robots.txt of each host the sitemap lists, or the sitemap itself: every URL is on the sitemap's origin or covered by a Sitemap: line. Run this rule again.
Thresholds
| Name | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
page_media_types | 'text/html', 'application/xhtml+xml', 'application/pdf', 'application/msword', 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document', 'application/vnd.ms-excel', 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet', 'application/vnd.ms-powerpoint', 'application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation', 'application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text', 'application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet', 'application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.presentation', 'application/rtf', 'application/epub+zip', 'text/plain' | Media types a sitemap entry may have, as a quoted SQL list. HTML pages plus the document formats Google lists as indexable (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, plain text; https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/indexable-file-types, opened 2026-10-17). iamphera/sitepreflight flags entries that are not HTML and not an indexable document, and allows PDF and Office files (competitors/github/iamphera-sitepreflight.md). Anything else (stylesheets, scripts, JSON, Markdown, images, fonts, XML feeds) is reported. Images and videos belong in the image and video extensions of a sitemap, not in <loc> of a page entry. |