What LOCRA is
LOCRA is a free tool that reads a public XML sitemap and then visits every URL in it, live, one by one.
You get a clear PASS or FAIL for each URL, using the same rules every time. No Search Console login, no crawl budget, no setup — just a public sitemap URL.
What it checks
- Status: what the live page actually returns (200, 404, 410, 5xx).
- Redirects: whether the URL in the sitemap is the URL you end up on.
- Host: whether the final URL is still on the same site.
- Robots: whether the page is set to noindex, in the page or in the response headers.
- Canonical: whether the page points to itself as the canonical URL.
How we judge
PASS means all of this is true:
- The final URL returns 200.
- The page is not set to noindex.
- The page's canonical points to that same final URL.
FAIL is always labelled with one reason, so you know what to do next:
- 404 / 410 / 5xx — the page is gone or broken.
- 200 + noindex — the page loads but is told not to be indexed.
- Redirected — the sitemap URL is not the final URL.
- Wrong host — the final URL sits on a different domain.
- Fetch error — the page could not be reached in time.
Same page, same rules, same result. No guessing.
How to run a check
- 01Go to the tool and sign in with your email — you get a one-tap link, no password.
- 02Paste a public sitemap URL, or hit Load example sitemap to try it.
- 03Optionally add the URL count you expect, so you can compare.
- 04Hit Run. Results stream in with a running total of PASS and FAIL.
A sitemap index (a sitemap of sitemaps) is not supported yet — paste one of the child sitemaps instead.
Turning results into a ticket
The point isn't the number. It's the list someone can act on.
- Filter to failures only, or to one reason at a time.
- Group by reason so each ticket has one job.
- Search a URL pattern to scope it to one section of the site.
- Tick the rows you want, then export CSV, or a plain text file of bad URLs — one per line.
Paste that list straight into your dev or content ticket. That's the whole idea: live check in, ticket out.
Good to know
- It only uses public data: the sitemap and live HTTP requests.
- Big sitemaps are capped at 2,000 URLs per run.
- It's free forever. Email sign-in exists so we know who's using it, not to sell you anything.
If you want this thinking installed inside your team, the matching service for this category is Open tools.
