Sitemap SEO Audit — extract sitemaps & check indexability

Sitemap SEO audit in one run: this Actor reads a site's robots.txt, discovers and recursively follows its sitemaps, then audits every URL for indexability — with no Search Console access, signup or API key required. You get one dataset row per URL with isIndexable, HTTP status and redirect chains, canonical checks, noindex directives, title and meta lengths, hreflang sets, image alt coverage and internal links. It works on competitor sites and client sites you have not been granted access to.

What you get

• isIndexable — true only when the page returns 200, carries no noindex, and its canonical resolves to itself.
• findings[] — every issue with id, severity and an evidence string, sorted most severe first.
• httpStatus, redirectChain, responseMs and contentBytes — the full HTTP layer for each URL.
• canonicalUrl / canonicalIsSelf, title, metaDescription, h1Count and hreflang — content signals.
• imageCount / imagesMissingAltCount, internalLinkCount / externalLinkCount, structuredDataTypes.
• recordHash plus highSeverityCount / mediumSeverityCount / lowSeverityCount for diffing and triage.

Quick start

1. Open the Actor and leave the prefilled apify.com in Sites, or enter your own domain, full URL or explicit sitemap URL.
2. Choose Mode: extract-urls to size a site cheaply first, audit to fetch and audit every URL.
3. Optionally set Max URLs per site and Max URLs for the whole run to control your bill, then click Start.
4. Open the Audit results, Findings and Indexability dataset tabs.

Minimal input:

{
  "sites": ["apify.com"],
  "mode": "audit"
}

Example output

One representative dataset row for one audited page:

{
  "recordType": "page",
  "ok": true,
  "errorCode": null,
  "site": "example.com",
  "url": "https://example.com/products/widget",
  "sitemapLastmod": "2026-09-30",
  "httpStatus": 200,
  "finalUrl": "https://example.com/products/widget",
  "redirectCount": 1,
  "redirectChain": [{ "status": 301, "to": "https://example.com/products/widget" }],
  "contentType": "text/html",
  "responseMs": 412,
  "contentBytes": 142331,
  "isIndexable": false,
  "findingCount": 3,
  "highSeverityCount": 1,
  "mediumSeverityCount": 1,
  "lowSeverityCount": 1,
  "findings": [
    { "id": "canonical-differs", "severity": "high", "message": "Canonical points to a different domain (www.example.com), so this URL will not be indexed.", "evidence": "https://www.example.com/products/widget" },
    { "id": "h1-multiple", "severity": "medium", "message": "3 h1 elements found.", "evidence": "Widget | Buy now | Related" },
    { "id": "images-missing-alt", "severity": "low", "message": "2 of 9 images have no alt text (22%).", "evidence": null }
  ],
  "metaRobots": "index, follow",
  "xRobotsTag": null,
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.example.com/products/widget",
  "canonicalIsSelf": false,
  "title": "Widget - Example",
  "titleLength": 16,
  "metaDescription": "Buy the Widget, shipped worldwide.",
  "metaDescriptionLength": 34,
  "h1Count": 3,
  "h1": "Widget",
  "hreflang": [],
  "imageCount": 9,
  "imagesMissingAltCount": 2,
  "internalLinkCount": 118,
  "externalLinkCount": 12,
  "structuredDataTypes": ["Product", "BreadcrumbList"],
  "mainEntity": "Product",
  "recordHash": "91ab7c3e0d5f2846"
}

Why this is different from a page-speed or crawl tool

Most SEO tools either need your own verified property or give you a score you cannot audit. This one gives you findings with evidence strings — every issue cites the actual markup or header that caused it:

{
  "id": "canonical-differs",
  "severity": "high",
  "message": "Canonical points to a different domain (example.com), so this URL will not be indexed.",
  "evidence": "https://example.com/store"
}

What this SEO audit tool checks

• 🔎 Sitemap discovery — robots.txt Sitemap: declarations first, then eight conventional paths (/sitemap.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, …). Sitemap index files are followed recursively, bounded by your file limit. Plain-text and HTML sitemaps are handled too.
• 🚦 HTTP layer — status codes, redirect chains with each hop, cross-domain redirects, response time, response size and truncation.
• 🛑 Indexability, the headline metric — isIndexable is true only when the page returns 200, carries no noindex, and its canonical resolves to itself. A noindex URL that is also listed in the sitemap raises noindex-in-sitemap, because those two signals contradict each other and Google resolves the conflict against you.
• 🔗 Canonical analysis — missing canonicals, cross-domain canonicals, and self-referencing checks that ignore utm_ parameters and trailing slashes.
• 🏷️ Meta and content — title presence and length, meta description presence and length, h1 count, multiple or missing h1, JSON-LD @type inventory.
• 🌍 Hreflang — declared alternates with resolved URLs, duplicate codes, missing x-default.
• 🖼️ Images — total count, images missing alt text, with the offending URLs.
• 🔗 Links — deduplicated internal and external links per page, ready to feed into a broken-link report.
• 🔒 Hygiene — missing HSTS and Content-Security-Policy headers.

Every finding is sorted most severe first, and every row carries highSeverityCount / mediumSeverityCount / lowSeverityCount so you can triage a 50,000-URL audit with one sort.

Two modes

Mode	What it does	Cost
Extract URLs only	Collects the sitemap URL list without fetching pages	Very cheap, per URL
Audit every URL	Fetches and audits each URL	Per page

Start with Extract URLs only to size a site, then run Audit every URL against a filtered subset. The urlPattern and excludeUrlPattern fields let you audit just /blog/, or skip everything with query parameters.

How to use it

1. Add sites to Sites. A domain, a full URL, or an explicit sitemap URL all work. Passing a sitemap URL skips discovery.
2. Choose Mode.
3. Set Max URLs per site and Max URLs for the whole run — these control your bill.
4. Optionally narrow with Include URL pattern (/blog/) and Exclude URL pattern (\?).
5. Click Start, then use the Audit results, Findings and Indexability dataset tabs.
6. Schedule it weekly and diff recordHash to catch regressions.

How much does it cost to audit a sitemap?

Two events, and you only ever pay one of them per URL:

Event	What triggers it	Billed
Page audit	One URL fetched and audited in Audit every URL mode	per page
URL discovered	One URL extracted from a sitemap without being fetched	per URL
Actor start	Once per run, platform fee	per run

A URL is charged either as a discovery or as an audit, never both. URLs skipped because of robots.txt, a failed fetch, or your include/exclude patterns are not billed as page audits. Sites where no sitemap was found are not billed.

1,000 URLs audited is 1,000 page-audit events — that is the whole calculation. Compute, bandwidth and storage are included; there is no separate platform-usage charge on top.

Set Max cost per run in the run options for a hard ceiling. Higher Apify plans get progressively lower per-page pricing through Apify Store tier discounts.

Evaluating? Run Extract URLs only first — it costs a fraction of a full audit and tells you exactly how many pages you would be buying.

Example input

{
  "sites": ["example.com", "https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml"],
  "mode": "audit",
  "maxUrlsPerSite": 1000,
  "maxUrlsTotal": 3000,
  "maxSitemapsPerSite": 30,
  "excludeUrlPattern": "\\?",
  "respectRobotsTxt": true,
  "checkInternalLinks": true,
  "includeImageAlt": true
}

Use cases

• Agency technical audits — a client-ready Findings view with severity and evidence, generated on demand.
• Migration QA — run before and after a replatform and diff recordHash per URL to catch canonical and noindex mistakes.
• Competitor teardown — indexability and content-gap analysis on sites you cannot access in Search Console.
• Programmatic SEO monitoring — schedule weekly, alert when isIndexable flips to false on any templated page.
• Broken-link hunting — take internalLinks from this dataset and feed them into the URL Status Checker.
• Content audits at scale — title and meta description length distributions across an entire site.

Related Actors by Axiora Solutions

Actor	Use it for
URL Status Checker	Bulk-check the internalLinks from this dataset for 404s and redirect chains
Domain Contact Enricher	Turn a prospect list into contactable records before pitching the audit
Shopify Product & Variant Scraper	Catalogue and pricing data for the storefronts you audit

Frequently asked questions

Does it need Google Search Console?

No, and that is the point. Everything comes from public signals: robots.txt, sitemaps and the pages themselves. It works on any site on the internet, including competitors and prospects.

How does it decide isIndexable?

Three conditions, all required: the final HTTP status is 200, no noindex appears in meta robots, meta googlebot or the X-Robots-Tag header, and the canonical — if one is declared — resolves to the same URL after normalising www, tracking parameters, a trailing slash and /index.html. All three components are on the row as separate fields, so you can override the verdict if your definition differs.

What if the site has no sitemap?

You get an ok: false row with EMPTY_RESULT explaining that robots.txt and eight conventional paths were checked, and nothing is billed. Go back a step with Extract URLs only off and confirm by opening /sitemap.xml. If the site genuinely has none, this Actor is not the right tool — a link-following crawler is.

Does it run JavaScript?

No. It reads server-rendered HTML, which is what search engines see first and what makes a 10,000-URL audit affordable. Sites that render content entirely client-side will show short titles and empty meta descriptions; that is itself a finding worth knowing.

What does respectRobotsTxt cost me?

Coverage. URLs that robots.txt disallows are counted in robotsSkipped and are not audited or billed as page audits. Leave it on unless you own the site or have written permission. It is the safer default and the honest one.

Why is sitemapLastmod not validated?

Because a large share of sites publish incorrect lastmod values, including dates in the future. The Actor reports what the sitemap claims and separately computes responseMs and recordHash from live observation. Trust the hash, not the claim.

Can it check page speed?

It records responseMs (server response time) and contentBytes as observed. It does not run Lighthouse: real Core Web Vitals need a headless browser, which would multiply the cost of an audit by orders of magnitude. If you need a performance audit as well, run a dedicated tool alongside this one.

Something looks wrong — how do I report it?

Open the Issues tab on this Actor page with the site, the URL and the finding ID you disagreed with. A false-positive finding is treated as a bug.

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Runnable examples and how-to guides for these Actors: github.com/batow133/axiora-apify-actors