---
title: "Sitemap lists URLs that don't return 200 directly (seo/sitemap-url-status)"
description: "seo/sitemap-url-status: Sitemaps should only contain canonical, live URLs; 404s and redirects waste crawl budget and erode trust in the sitemap."
canonical: https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-url-status
lastModified: 2026-09-16
---

# Sitemap lists URLs that don't return 200 directly

`seo/sitemap-url-status` · severity **error** · category SEO · detected by `void seo` and `void audit`

## Why it matters

Sitemaps should only contain canonical, live URLs; 404s and redirects waste crawl budget and erode trust in the sitemap. Over 5% of sampled URLs failing is a scoring gate.

## How to fix it

Generate the sitemap from the same data source as the routes, and list final URLs (no redirects, correct trailing-slash form).

## References

- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap

## More seo rules

`void seo` reports 60 rules in this category. What search engines need from the raw response: status codes, titles and descriptions in <head>, self-referencing canonicals, one h1, crawlable links, Open Graph, icons, robots.txt and a sitemap with real dates.

- `robots-sitemap-directive` robots.txt has no absolute Sitemap: line — [seo/robots-sitemap-directive](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/robots-sitemap-directive)
- `sitemap-missing` No reachable sitemap — [seo/sitemap-missing](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-missing)
- `sitemap-invalid` Sitemap isn't valid sitemap XML or exceeds protocol limits — [seo/sitemap-invalid](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-invalid)
- `sitemap-url-invalid` Sitemap <loc> is relative or on another host — [seo/sitemap-url-invalid](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-url-invalid)
- `sitemap-lastmod` <lastmod> invalid, in the future, or identical across entries — [seo/sitemap-lastmod](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-lastmod)
- `sitemap-url-not-indexable` Sitemap lists noindex, robots-blocked or non-canonical URLs — [seo/sitemap-url-not-indexable](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/sitemap-url-not-indexable)
- `duplicate-title` Multiple pages share the same <title> — [seo/duplicate-title](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/duplicate-title)
- `duplicate-description` Multiple pages share the same meta description — [seo/duplicate-description](https://void-design.vercel.app/rules/seo/duplicate-description)

Detected by `void seo` and `void audit`. Explain it in a terminal: `void rules seo/sitemap-url-status`
