Sitemap vs crawl
Categories
- In both — declared by the sitemap and found by the crawl; review status and indexing signals too
- Missing from sitemap — crawl found it but sitemap doesn't declare it
- Orphaned in sitemap — sitemap declares it but the available crawl did not reach it
- Broken — returns 4xx or 5xx error
- Redirected — URL redirects to a different page
- Canonical mismatch — canonical tag differs from sitemap URL
- Noindex conflict — in sitemap but has
noindexdirective
What the comparison cannot prove
The sitemap set is declared inventory; the crawl set is a bounded observation. Differences are candidates for review. “Not observed” does not prove deleted, orphaned, private or unindexed. Confirm crawl completion, scope and timing before comparing counts.
For each URL, inspect response, intended canonical and robots policy. A page found by a crawl may correctly be excluded from the sitemap. A sitemap URL may correctly remain listed even when a limited crawl did not reach it. See Pages and indexability evidence.