¶01 What a sitemap is for
If a sitemap lists addresses that return “not found”, Google spends its visits on dead pages and may miss the real ones. Artifexa checks every sitemap address on UK ERP partner sites live and fixes the cause.
A sitemap is a list of the pages on your site that you want Google to find. It is a hint, not a command. When the list is accurate, it helps. When it points at pages that are not there, it gets in the way.
¶02 What goes wrong on partner sites
Renamed pages. A page gets a new address, but the sitemap still lists the old one.
Capital letters in addresses. On many servers, an address with a capital letter is a different page from the same address in lower case.
Old CMS routes. A website platform change leaves old addresses in the list that no longer lead anywhere.
None of these show up when you look at the site in your editor. They only show up when the address is fetched for real.
¶03 What we found on one partner’s site
On one partner’s site, a big share of the addresses in the sitemap returned “not found”, including every industry page.
The cause was capital letters in the addresses. The pages existed, but not at the addresses the sitemap gave Google.
¶04 Why it matters
Google has limited time for each site. Visits spent on dead addresses are visits not spent on your real pages.
The pages most often caught out are the ones that matter for winning work, such as industry and service pages. If Google cannot reach them, buyers searching for that help may not find you.
¶05 How we check it
Every address, fetched live. We check each sitemap address on the live site, not in the editor.
Before and after. We record what each address returned before the fix and check again after it.
The cause, not just the symptom. We find out why the addresses broke, so the problem does not come back.
For the wider picture, see SEO for NetSuite partners and our visibility framework.
¶06 Next step
Our playbook covers site structure in more depth, and our free AI Visibility Checker checks a sample of your sitemap addresses.
Or start with the Enquiry Leak Finder. It takes about three minutes and shows where enquiries may be slipping away.
Basis for this piece
One anonymised example from our work. We make no claim about how often this happens across partner sites, or how quickly Google responds to a fix.