A sitemap that contradicts the page
===================================

Rule · bucket: judgment · severity: error · detector: none · since: v0.14.0
Section: Things to avoid
Group: Search and sharing

Forbidden:
  A route listed in the sitemap whose own metadata says `noindex`; a sitemap entry for a page that does not exist; a `<loc>` written as a path, `/pricing`, which the format does not accept and a crawler drops

Instead:
  One answer per route. The sitemap lists what is indexable, as full URLs, and nothing else.

Contradicting yourself in two files tells a crawler you do not know which is true, and it will decide for you. A sitemap needs the site's origin, so a project that has none yet has nothing to write: no sitemap is honest, and one full of paths is not.