Sitemap XML Generator

An XML sitemap is one of the most fundamental SEO assets your website can have. It acts as a roadmap for search engine crawlers — a structured file that tells Google, Bing, and other search engines exactly which pages exist on your site, when they were last updated, and how important they are relative to each other. Without a sitemap, search engines have to discover your pages purely by following links, which means deep or newly published content can go unindexed for weeks or even months.

What Is an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file — typically named sitemap.xml — that lives at the root of your domain (e.g. https://example.com/sitemap.xml). It follows a standardised protocol defined at sitemaps.org and lists every URL you want search engines to crawl. Each entry can include optional metadata: the last modification date (lastmod), how often the page changes (changefreq), and a priority score from 0.0 to 1.0.

Why Does Your Website Need a Sitemap?

Google has confirmed that sitemaps help with crawl discovery, especially for large websites, new websites with few inbound links, and websites with rich media content like video or images. Even for smaller sites, submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console gives you direct feedback on how many URLs have been discovered, how many are indexed, and which pages have errors. This data is invaluable for diagnosing SEO issues early.

Beyond Google, Bing Webmaster Tools, Yandex, and other search engines all support sitemap submission. A single sitemap.xml file covers all of them simultaneously once you add it to your robots.txt using the Sitemap: directive.

How to Use This Sitemap Generator

Our free sitemap generator fetches your website through a CORS-proxy waterfall — trying multiple public proxies until one succeeds — then parses all internal links from the HTML using the browser's native DOMParser. This means it works entirely in your browser with no server-side processing and no data stored anywhere.

Simply enter your domain URL and click Generate. The tool will crawl the page, extract all same-domain href links, filter out asset files, and produce a valid sitemap.xml you can download immediately. If proxy access is blocked, you can paste the page's HTML source directly and the tool will extract links locally.

Best Practices for XML Sitemaps

Keep your sitemap lean — only include canonical, indexable URLs. Exclude paginated pages beyond page 2, filtered parameter URLs, search results pages, login and admin pages, and any URL that carries a noindex directive. Google's crawler can handle sitemaps up to 50,000 URLs and 50MB uncompressed, but smaller focused sitemaps are generally more effective.

For large sites, use a sitemap index file that references multiple child sitemaps — one per content type (blog posts, products, categories). This keeps each file manageable and makes it easier to diagnose crawl issues per content type.

Always set a realistic lastmod date. Inflating lastmod dates to force recrawling is a known manipulation tactic, and Google has stated it ignores lastmod when the values are unreliable. Update lastmod only when content genuinely changes.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Once you've downloaded your sitemap.xml, upload it to your server root and navigate to Google Search Console → Sitemaps → Add a new sitemap. Enter the full URL and click Submit. Within a few days you should see the number of discovered URLs increase. Monitor this report regularly — any URLs marked as "Excluded" or "Error" need attention.

Also add the sitemap URL to your robots.txt file: Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml. This ensures any crawler that reads robots.txt discovers your sitemap automatically, without needing a manual submission.

Sitemap vs. HTML Sitemap

An HTML sitemap is a human-readable page listing all your site's pages, primarily useful for user navigation on large websites. An XML sitemap is machine-readable and exclusively for search engine crawlers. Both serve different purposes and are complementary — having both is a best practice for large content-heavy sites.

Common Sitemap Mistakes to Avoid

Including redirect URLs is one of the most common mistakes. Every URL in your sitemap should return a 200 status code — not a 301 redirect. Redirected URLs waste crawl budget and can dilute the signal. Similarly, never include URLs that return 404 errors or have a canonical pointing to a different URL. Your sitemap should only contain the definitive, canonical version of each page.

Another common error is forgetting to update the sitemap after publishing new content. Consider automating sitemap generation through your CMS or build process, so it always reflects the current state of your website.