Tools help·4 min read

LOCRA — how it works

What LOCRA checks, how it decides PASS or FAIL, how to run a sitemap, and how to export a list you can paste into a ticket.

Nikko Nanji
Nikko Nanji
Founder, NiKKOS
LOCRAtoolssitemapstechnical SEO

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

  1. 01Go to the tool and sign in with your email — you get a one-tap link, no password.
  2. 02Paste a public sitemap URL, or hit Load example sitemap to try it.
  3. 03Optionally add the URL count you expect, so you can compare.
  4. 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.
Work with me

If you want this thinking installed inside your team, the matching service for this category is Open tools.