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Rule · robots.txt

Sitemap lines are fully qualified URLs

SEO-ROBOTS-08C1 Mechanism· w8

Class
C1 Mechanism
Weight
8
Severity on fail
critical
Applies to
Google

Test this rule on a live site with the robots.txt checker or the XML sitemap checker. Free, no account needed.

Scope and evidence

Evaluated on each in-scope origin with Sitemap lines. The book marks this requirement OPTIONAL (field), with a documented format requirement.

Declaring a sitemap in robots.txt is optional. Sitemaps that cannot be retrieved are judged by SEO-SITEMAP-07.

Fail conditions

Each condition has a stable code and a reason template. The evaluator fills the placeholders from observed values only; no sentence in a report is generated.

  • not_fully_qualified

    robots.txt line {line} declares Sitemap: {value}. Google requires this field to be a fully qualified URL, including the protocol and host, so the line cannot be used.

The documented fix

Write the absolute URL, for example Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

Sources, quoted

These are the passages the rule rests on, stored once in the knowledge base and emitted exactly as written. A citation marked for specific conditions appears only on findings with those codes.