Orphaned sitemap URLs on fully crawled sites
| Group | Sites | Sitemap URLs | Orphaned | Sites with any orphan | Sites 10%+ orphaned | Median site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | 77 | 16,587 | 8.5% | 87.0% | 33.8% | 5.0% |
| WordPress | 39 | 8,431 | 8.6% | 82.1% | 30.8% | 3.4% |
| Other platforms | 38 | 8,156 | 8.3% | 92.1% | 36.8% | 5.6% |
| 100 or fewer sitemap URLs | 26 | 1,316 | 15.9% | 76.9% | 38.5% | 6.2% |
| 101 to 300 sitemap URLs | 29 | 4,990 | 9.8% | 93.1% | 34.5% | 4.5% |
| 301 to 900 sitemap URLs | 22 | 10,281 | 6.9% | 90.9% | 27.3% | 2.7% |
Source: PageSpeed Matters, Oct 2026. Sites with 900 or fewer sitemap URLs only; size groups are small and directional only.
Summary
An orphan page is a page that exists, often listed in the sitemap, but that no internal link points to. Crawlers can still find it through the sitemap, but visitors cannot click their way to it, and it gets none of the signals that internal links carry.
We compared sitemaps with what a crawler can reach by following links. On 77 small sites we could crawl completely, 87.0% had at least one sitemap URL that no internal link reaches, and 8.5% of their 16,587 sitemap URLs were orphaned.
What we measured
We crawled each site from the homepage, following internal links up to 1,000 pages, and read each site's sitemap in October 2026. A sitemap URL counts as orphaned when no page in the crawl links to it.
To make the comparison fair, the study is limited to 77 sites with 900 or fewer sitemap URLs whose crawl finished under the 1,000-page cap. That means it describes small sites only. Links that appear only after JavaScript interaction can make a page look orphaned, and the splits by sitemap size are directional only.
Almost nine in ten small sites have orphaned sitemap URLs
87.0% of the 77 fully crawled sites had at least one sitemap URL that no internal link reaches. Across their 16,587 sitemap URLs, 8.5% were orphaned, and the median site had 5.0% of its sitemap orphaned.
For many sites the gap is more than a stray page or two. 33.8% of the 77 sites had 10% or more of their sitemap URLs orphaned.
Orphans likely build up over time: pages get dropped from menus during a redesign, campaign pages outlive their campaigns, and archive pages get generated automatically, while the sitemap keeps listing all of them.
87.0%
Share of 77 fully crawled small sites with at least one sitemap URL that no internal link reaches.
Non-WordPress sites are more often affected
Sites on platforms other than WordPress are more likely to have orphans. 92.1% of 38 non-WordPress sites had an orphaned sitemap URL, with a median of 5.6% orphaned. On 39 WordPress sites, the figures were 82.1% and 3.4%.
The overall orphan rates are close, though: 8.6% of WordPress sitemap URLs against 8.3% on other platforms. The difference is in how widely the problem spreads across sites rather than in how many URLs it touches.
Sitemap size points in a direction too, though the groups are small. Sites with 100 or fewer sitemap URLs had 15.9% of them orphaned, against 9.8% for 101 to 300 and 6.9% for 301 to 900. On a small site, a handful of forgotten pages is a larger share of the sitemap.
Archive pages are the most orphaned URL type
Tag, category and author archives are the most orphaned URL type: 18.3% of the 356 listed were not reachable by links. Blog and news posts follow at 12.9% of 2,864, while product and collection pages are rarely orphaned, at 1.5% of 1,267.
Archives are likely high because many sites generate them automatically and list them in the sitemap, but never link to most of them from navigation or posts.
Blog and news posts make up 26.2% of all 1,407 orphaned sitemap URLs, the largest named group. Those are usually the pages a site wants found, so they are the first ones to bring back into the internal link structure.
What this means for your site
Compare your sitemap with a crawl of your site. Any URL in the sitemap that the crawl did not reach through links is an orphan candidate.
- For each orphan, decide whether it should exist. Remove dead or outdated pages from the sitemap, and redirect them if they have value elsewhere.
- Link the pages you want to keep from relevant posts, category pages or hub pages.
- If tag or author archives are orphaned and thin, consider dropping them from the sitemap rather than linking to them.
- Check orphan candidates in a browser before acting, since some links only appear after a click or scroll.
Sources
- PageSpeed Matters crawls of ranking sites, up to 1,000 pages each, October 2026
- PageSpeed Matters sitemap check of the same sites, October 2026
- Google Search Central, SEO link best practices for Google: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable
Embed this research
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<script>window.addEventListener("message",function(e){if(e&&e.data&&e.data.psmEmbed==="orphan-page-statistics"&&e.data.height){var f=document.getElementById("psm-orphan-page-statistics");if(f){f.style.height=e.data.height+"px";}}});</script>
<p style="font:14px/1.5 system-ui,sans-serif">Source: <a href="https://www.pagespeedmatters.com/resources/data-studies/orphan-page-statistics">Orphan Pages: 87% of Small Sites Have Sitemap URLs Nothing Links To - PageSpeed Matters</a></p>
Frequently asked questions
How common are orphan pages?
Very common on small sites. Of 77 small sites we could crawl completely, 87.0% had at least one sitemap URL that no internal link reaches, and 8.5% of their 16,587 sitemap URLs were orphaned.
What types of pages are most often orphaned?
Tag, category and author archives: 18.3% of those listed in sitemaps were not reachable by links. Blog and news posts followed at 12.9%, and they made up 26.2% of all orphaned sitemap URLs.
How do I find orphan pages on my site?
Crawl your site from the homepage and compare the crawled URLs with your sitemap. Any sitemap URL the crawl did not reach is an orphan candidate; on the median site in our sample that was 5.0% of the sitemap.
Orphan pages are easy to find once a crawl is compared with the sitemap, and most can be fixed with a few internal links or a sitemap cleanup. Need help with this? See our technical SEO services.