Free Sitemap Generator (+ Guide)

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a file at your site's root, usually /sitemap.xml, that lists the pages you want search engines to find.

Each entry is a page's address, and can add when it last changed, its images and its language versions.

Google says you might need one if your site is large, new with few links to it, or heavy on images and video. A small site that links every page well may not, but a sitemap never hurts.

How to make a sitemap

What the crawl does

The crawl starts from the sitemap you have (the one robots.txt names, or the usual addresses), then follows your links from the home page, up to 5 clicks deep.

It reads each page the way a crawler does, and leaves a page out when it shouldn't be in a sitemap:

• Not found – the page answers with an error.
• Redirects – the address sends visitors somewhere else, so the sitemap lists the new address.
• Noindex – the page asks search engines to skip it.
• Canonical elsewhere – the page names another address as the real one.
• Blocked in robots.txt – crawlers aren't allowed to read it.

Each page in the sitemap gets its newest date, up to 10 images and every language version it names.

What the report checks

The report grades the sitemap you have now, out of 100, in 3 parts: whether crawlers can find it, whether it lists only real pages, and whether it lists every page your links lead to.

It also reads the date your sitemap gives each page, and finds the pages your sitemap lists that nothing links to.

Dead internal links and pages without dates get flagged too. So do pages more than 3 clicks from home. Each check that fails has a How to fix.

A prompt you can hand to an AI lists every problem with its pages, so it can fix them all at once.

Every page gets a row with its own date beside the one your sitemap gives it. The pages left out can be filtered by why.

The dates in your sitemap

Each address in a sitemap can carry a lastmod, the date its page last changed.

Google says it uses that date only if it's "consistently and verifiably" accurate, so a wrong date is worse than none.

The report flags the dates that give a sitemap away:

• One date on every page – the sitemap was stamped with the day it was built, so the dates say nothing.
• Dates in the wrong format – search engines read dates like 2026-10-01, or with a time and a time zone.
• Dates in the future – no page changed tomorrow.
• Dates older than the page – the page says it changed after the date your sitemap gives it.

Change a page's date only when what's on it really changes, not for a new copyright year.

Pages nothing links to

A page your sitemap lists but no other page links to is an orphan. Search engines can find it through the sitemap, but nothing on your site says how it fits in or that it matters.

When I crawled Plausible's site on October 1, 2026, its sitemap listed 163 addresses, and 5 of them had no link from any page.

Three were old job posts, from a jobs page that no longer exists.

The report only lists orphans when the crawl read your whole site, since a page it never read could hold the link.

Link to each one from a page on the same topic, or take it out of the sitemap if it shouldn't be found.

Does it work on JavaScript sites?

Yes. The crawl reads each page's HTML the way most search engines and AI crawlers do.

When your home page builds its links with JavaScript, the generator draws it in a browser first, so it still finds your pages.

If your pages show their words only after JavaScript runs, they still go in the sitemap, but some crawlers will see them empty. The AI agent readiness checker shows which ones.

Plain or designed

Both give search engines the same XML. The difference is what a person sees if they open it.

The plain sitemap is the standard file, and shows as raw XML in a browser.

The designed sitemap adds a stylesheet, sitemap.xsl, so the same file opens as a page in your name, logo and color, with light and dark modes. It's drawn like the sitemap on my own site.

It also comes with sitemap.html, a sitemap page for people, grouped by section, with a search box.

Chrome stops drawing styled XML in Chrome 158, on November 17, 2026, and Firefox and Safari plan the same. The designed sitemap has an option that adds Chrome's suggested fix, so the look keeps working.

The page for people works everywhere either way.

Where your sitemap goes

On most sites, the files go in the top folder, beside your home page. Some platforms make the sitemap for you:

• WordPress – makes one at /wp-sitemap.xml, and SEO plugins swap in their own.
• Shopify, Squarespace and Wix – make and update /sitemap.xml themselves, so you submit theirs.
• Webflow – makes one, or takes a sitemap you paste into its SEO settings.
• Next.js – serves files from the public folder, or builds the sitemap from code.

The report has the steps for each, and a prompt for Claude Code or Codex that does it for you.

How to submit your sitemap

Add a line to robots.txt that names your sitemap. Every crawler that reads robots.txt then finds it.

Then submit it in Google Search Console, under Sitemaps, and in Bing Webmaster Tools. Both show how many of your pages they read, and which ones they couldn't.

How often to make a new sitemap

Make a new one whenever your pages change, unless your platform keeps it current for you.

WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix and Webflow update their own sitemaps, so for those, run the check every few months to catch pages that broke.

After you submit it, open your most important new pages in Search Console's URL Inspection and press Request indexing.

Sitemap rules that matter

Google's own guide keeps it short:

• Size – 50,000 addresses or 50 MB per file. Past that, split it into an index and parts, which this generator does for you.
• Dates – Google uses lastmod only when it's consistently accurate, so each date here comes from the page itself.
• Priority and change frequency – Google ignores both, so this generator leaves them out.
• Place – a sitemap at your site's root covers every page on the site.

The files this generator makes follow all four, so they're ready to submit.

Who is the sitemap generator for?

It's for anyone who wants every page of their site found:

• How to start a blog – new bloggers whose platform doesn't make a sitemap
• AI crawler checker – site owners checking their robots.txt lets search and AI crawlers in
• Broken link checker – anyone fixing the dead links the crawl finds
• SEO checker – anyone checking the pages a sitemap lists, one at a time
• llms.txt generator – site owners who want AI tools to find their key pages too

And if you've moved to a new platform, crawl the old site first, so you know which pages need a redirect.