Sitemap exceeds the 50,000 URL or 50 MB limit
What it is
A sitemap Asky read is over the limits for one sitemap file: it lists more than 50,000 URLs, or its uncompressed size is over 50 MB. Large shops and publishers run into this when every product, variant or article is written into a single generated file.
Why it matters
The limits come from the sitemaps.org protocol . Google says a larger file must be split into several sitemaps, and Bing sets the same 50,000 URL cap per file. A file past them may not be read in full, so some of its pages can lose the sitemap as a route to discovery, in search and, for Bing, in the Copilot answers built on its index.
How Asky checks it
Asky reads each sitemap it uses during its daily site discovery and at the start of each technical audit. It is reported when a file lists more than 50,000 <url> entries that have a <loc>, or more than 50,000 lines in a plain-text sitemap, or when it is larger than 50 MB (52,428,800 bytes). A .gz file is measured unpacked, and one that unpacks past 64 MB is not read at all. A file over both limits raises the issue twice, each with its count. Hreflang alternates inside an entry are not counted, and the number of sitemaps listed in a sitemap index is not checked.
Reported as a warning with medium severity.
How to fix it
- Split the file into several sitemaps, each with at most 50,000 URLs and under 50 MB. Splitting by section or content type, such as products and articles, keeps them easy to maintain.
- List those sitemaps in a sitemap index, a
<sitemapindex>file with one<sitemap>entry per file. - Point robots.txt at the index with a
Sitemap:line in place of the old file’s line. The sitemaps inside it then count as listed. - Most CMS sitemap features and SEO plugins can split automatically; check their setting for entries per sitemap.
- Take out URLs that do not belong in a sitemap, such as redirects, error pages and pages marked
noindex. It shrinks the files and keeps crawlers on pages you want found.
Example
https://example.com/sitemap.xml held 82,000 product URLs. It becomes an index of two files:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-products-1.xml</loc></sitemap>
<sitemap><loc>https://example.com/sitemap-products-2.xml</loc></sitemap>
</sitemapindex>