Locating a website sitemap is quite straightforward if you know where to look. There are several quick ways to find it, if they exist on the site.

Manually

The quickest way to check is within your website browser, type in your website domain and add /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml onto it. For example, www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

If either of those files exist, they will load, otherwise they will lead to a 404 page. If it’s not found, it doesn’t mean that a sitemap doesn’t exist, because the file name could be different. That’s where the next few methods will come in handy.

Search Operators

In Google, Bing, or Yahoo, certain search operators can help filter results to highlight whether certain pages or files, like the sitemap, exists. Below are a few search operators that can be edited and copy/pasted into the search bar to reveal if a sitemap exists or not:

site:domain.com filetype:xml

site:domain.com inurl:sitemap

site:domain.com intitle:sitemap

Google Search Console

Another alternative method, if the website is already set up with Google Search Console, is to log into that account and check if a sitemap has already been submitted. If it has, then its location can be easily seen.

Robots.txt

Finally, one can also check the robots.txt file, located at the root of a website (e.g. www.example.com/robots.txt) to see if the sitemap is listed there. It’s best practice to, however, many sites haven’t added their XML sitemap or sitemap index file here yet.