Sitemap lists no pages
What it is
A sitemap Asky read answered successfully but lists nothing: its body is blank, it has no <url> entry with a page address, or it is a sitemap index with no <sitemap> entries. A CMS often leaves one behind for a content type or language with no published pages yet, and a generator that fails quietly can produce one too.
Why it matters
An empty sitemap tells crawlers there is nothing to find there. When it is your only sitemap, search engines and AI crawlers that read sitemaps have to find every page through links, and pages deep in the site are found late. Bing calls sitemaps foundational to URL coverage, for search and for Copilot. For Asky, an empty sitemap adds no pages to crawl or monitor.
How Asky checks it
Asky reads each sitemap it uses during its daily site discovery and at the start of each technical audit, including every child of a sitemap index. It is reported when a success response has a blank body, when a file with no <sitemapindex> element has no <url> entry containing a <loc>, or when a <sitemapindex> has no <sitemap> entry with a <loc>. An RSS or Atom feed with an XML declaration has no such entries, so it lands here, and entries without <loc> also raise invalid XML. A file that is neither XML nor a list of URLs is invalid XML, and a 404 is sitemap missing. It clears on the first run that finds entries.
Reported as a warning with medium severity.
How to fix it
- Open the sitemap URL from the issue’s details and check it is the file you expect.
- If the section it covers should have pages, publish them, or fix the setting that leaves them out, such as a content type excluded from the sitemap in your SEO plugin.
- If the section is not used, remove the empty sitemap from its index and from robots.txt, or switch it off in your CMS. Deleting a sitemap that robots.txt or Asky still lists raises sitemap missing instead.
- If a feed is listed as your sitemap, list an XML sitemap in its place.
- To leave it as it is: if the sitemap is empty on purpose, for example for a section that launches soon, mark the issue resolved.
Example
A language sitemap on https://example.com that a CMS created before any page was translated:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
</urlset>Once the translated pages are published, each one gets a <url> entry with its <loc>, such as https://example.com/de/blog/pricing-guide.