<b>Only 200s belong in a sitemap</b>

<b>Only 200s belong in a sitemap</b>

A sitemap is a list of URLs you stand behind. A 404, 301, or 500 in there burns crawl budget and erodes Google's trust in the file.

Status rules:
— ✅ Every URL returns 200.
— ❌ 3xx — list the redirect target instead.
— ❌ 404/410 — remove immediately.
— ❌ 5xx — fix the server before re-listing.

Audit SOP:
Step 1 — Crawl all sitemap URLs, capture final status code.
Step 2 — Bucket by status; anything not 200 is a defect.
Step 3 — Schedule this crawl weekly (catalogs drift fast as SKUs retire).

Threshold: non-200 rate under 1% at any snapshot; target 0%.

Definition of done: a status-code histogram of the sitemap shows a single bar at 200.