Sitemap line in robots.txt: Crawl Audit check 34

Short answer: one line in your robots.txt, Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, tells every crawler that reads robots.txt where your sitemap is. Check 34 warns when that line is missing, or points somewhere other than the sitemap Crawl Audit found. It takes a minute to fix.

What Crawl Audit checks

• Pass: the sitemap Crawl Audit found is the one named in the first Sitemap: line of your robots.txt.
• Warning: the sitemap exists but robots.txt doesn't name it.
• Warning: there's no sitemap at all (fix check 32 first).

The rules for the Sitemap line

From Google's robots.txt specification and the sitemaps protocol:

• "It must be a fully qualified URL, including the protocol and host". Sitemap: /sitemap.xml isn't valid.
• "The URL doesn't have to be on the same host as the robots.txt file."
• "You can specify multiple sitemap fields, with no limit to the number of sitemaps you can include."
• "The sitemap field isn't tied to any specific user agent", or in the protocol's words, "it doesn't matter where you place it in your file."

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Ours is the last line of our robots.txt: Sitemap: https://devmarde.com/sitemap.xml.

Why it's worth it when you've also submitted it

Submitting your sitemap in Google Search Console tells Google. The robots.txt line tells everyone else that reads robots.txt: Bing, other search engines, and the AI crawlers. It's the same sitemap, made findable in one more place.

On your platform

• WordPress: core adds the line for its own sitemap automatically. If Yoast replaces the sitemap, check the line points to /sitemap_index.xml.
• Shopify: the default robots.txt includes the sitemap line.
• Wix: check in the Robots.txt Editor, and add the line if it's missing.
• Next.js: set sitemap in app/robots.ts.

Sources

• Google, How Google interprets the robots.txt specification (updated 31 August 2026), checked 3 October 2026.
• sitemaps.org, Sitemaps XML format.
• WordPress, XML sitemaps in WordPress 5.5; Next.js, robots.txt.