What is measured
The audit reads the robots.txt declaration and the standard /sitemap.xml, then parses URLs or nested sitemap files.
Technical access and indexing
XML sitemap
This check finds the sitemap and determines whether a crawler can obtain the selected canonical URL list.
Pass criterion
The sitemap returns 200 and contains only accessible, canonical, indexable URLs with genuine modification dates.
What to fix
Remove redirects, errors, noindex pages and personalised reports; add new useful pages after editorial review.
Automation limit
A sitemap helps discovery but does not guarantee indexing and does not replace internal links.
Reference