XML Sitemap Generator

What is the XML Sitemap Generator?

The XML Sitemap Generator is a free tool that crawls a website by following its links and writes a sitemap.xml file listing every same-domain URL it visited. You choose how many pages to crawl, from 10 to 200. The result shows the XML to copy or download, the pages found and how long the crawl took.

How to use the XML Sitemap Generator

1. Enter your domain, such as example.com.
2. Set Pages to crawl between 10 and 200. The default is 50, and higher numbers take longer.
3. Press Generate. The tool follows links from page to page on your domain, up to the number of pages you set.
4. Read the pages found, page limit and crawl time. A notice appears when the crawl stopped at your limit and the site may have more pages.
5. Check the list of pages crawled, then press Copy or Download to get sitemap.xml.

How does a crawl-built sitemap find pages?

It follows links. The crawl starts at the address you enter, reads each HTML page, and queues every link that stays on the same domain, up to your page limit. It drops # fragments and ? query strings, so one page is not listed twice.

That makes the page list a useful check in itself. A page you expected but do not see is one nothing links to, called an orphan page. If a crawl cannot reach a page by following links, a search engine starting from your homepage cannot either, so add a link to that page as well as a sitemap entry.

What should you check before uploading the sitemap?

Check that every URL is a working page you want indexed. A sitemap should list only pages you want in search, so remove any URL that redirects, returns an error, points at a file such as a PDF, is blocked in robots.txt or carries a noindex tag. The Noindex Checker tests any page you are unsure about.

Then set the dates. Every entry gets today's date as <lastmod>, weekly as <changefreq> and 0.8 as <priority>. Google trusts <lastmod> only when the dates are accurate, so replace them with each page's real update date or delete the <lastmod> lines.

Should you use this or your CMS sitemap?

Use your CMS sitemap when you have one. WordPress, Shopify and most other platforms generate a sitemap that updates as you publish.

A crawl-built sitemap suits a static site, a hand-coded site, or a platform whose own sitemap is missing or broken. It is a snapshot, so generate it again whenever you add or remove pages.

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on a site you want search engines to find, in the format set out at sitemaps.org. Google, Bing and Yandex all read it. The root element is <urlset> in the http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 namespace, and each page is a <url> entry.

A minimal entry looks like <url><loc>https://example.com/about</loc><lastmod>2025-01-15</lastmod></url>. Only <loc> is required. The file this generator writes also carries <changefreq> and <priority>, which Google ignores, so you can keep or delete them.

The format also has extensions for images, videos and news, which Google supports, and an hreflang annotation for language versions of a page. This generator writes plain page entries only.

Every <loc> must be an absolute URL, and characters such as & must be escaped as &. This generator escapes them for you and writes the file as UTF-8.

How to generate an XML sitemap?

There are three ways to generate an XML sitemap, and the right one depends on how your site is built. A CMS such as WordPress or Shopify writes one for you and keeps it current. A framework can build one from its own list of routes, as Next.js does with an app/sitemap.ts file. And a crawler, such as this generator, can write one by following the links on your live site.

Hosted builders do this without asking: Blogger, Wix and Squarespace all serve a sitemap at /sitemap.xml, which the XML Sitemap Viewer lists. Static site generators often do it too: Hugo writes a sitemap.xml by default, and Jekyll sites usually add the jekyll-sitemap plugin.

Whichever you use, the last steps are the same: upload the file to your site root, declare it in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line, and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Then check it with the XML Sitemap Validator to catch format problems before a search engine reports them.

Is sitemap.xml still relevant?

Yes. Google still reads sitemaps and says they help most on large sites, new sites with few links pointing at them, and sites whose pages are poorly linked to one another. Bing and Yandex read them too.

What has changed is how you tell Google about one. Google retired its sitemap ping endpoint in 2023, so a script that pings Google after each update does nothing now. Submit the sitemap in Search Console and list it in robots.txt, and Google fetches it again on its own schedule. For Bing and Yandex, IndexNow is the faster way to announce a changed URL.

A sitemap does not replace internal links. Google still finds most pages by following links, and a page listed in the sitemap but linked from nowhere tells Google little about how much it matters.

Sitemaps also reach AI search by an indirect route. Bing reads them, and Bing's index is what Microsoft Copilot answers from.

What is the best XML sitemap generator?

The best XML sitemap generator is usually the one built into your platform, because it updates the file every time you publish and never misses a page that exists. A crawl-based generator is the better choice when there is no platform sitemap, or when you want to see what a crawler can actually reach.

Desktop crawlers are another option for larger sites, since they run on your own machine. Most have a free tier with a cap: the free version of Screaming Frog, for example, stops at 500 URLs.

Whatever you use, generate the file again after large changes. A sitemap that still lists deleted or redirected pages wastes crawls and makes the real pages harder to judge.

Know the limits of this one before you rely on it. It crawls up to 200 pages and stops after about 45 seconds, whichever comes first. It reads links from <a href> tags in the HTML your server sends and does not run JavaScript, so links that appear only after scripts run are not followed. It stays on the exact host you entered, so a crawl from example.com skips links to www.example.com. It does not read robots.txt or check pages for noindex, which is why the list needs a review before you upload it.