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World desk6 min

How to Generate an XML Sitemap by Crawling a Website

A crawl finds candidate URLs, but a useful sitemap includes only the right canonical pages. Learn how to crawl, filter, write, validate, and publish one.
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To generate a sitemap from a website crawl, collect reachable internal URLs, then keep only unique, preferred canonical pages that should appear in search. Serialize those URLs as XML (or a plain text list), validate the file, publish it, and point search engines to it. First check whether your CMS or site software already creates a sitemap: Google says using the site’s own software is the best method when available.

A crawl is an inventory, not an SEO policy. The URLs it finds still need to be checked for scope, status, canonicalization, indexability, and usefulness.

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Check whether your site already generates a sitemap

For a site you own or administer, look in your CMS documentation, inspect the site’s robots.txt for a Sitemap: directive, and check common sitemap locations such as /sitemap.xml. Many site platforms can maintain the file as pages change. Google’s guidance is: “However, the best way is to have your website software generate it for you.” Google’s sitemap-building guidance explains the supported formats and submission options.

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Use a crawl-derived sitemap when you need an inventory that the site software does not conveniently expose, or when you want to audit and select URLs yourself. Keep the crawler’s output as candidates until you apply the inclusion rules below.

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Choose a crawl method and set its boundaries

Desktop crawler: Screaming Frog

  1. Enter the site’s starting URL in Screaming Frog SEO Spider and run the crawl.
  2. When it finishes, choose Sitemaps > XML Sitemap.
  3. Review the included and excluded URLs, adjust the configuration or remove rows that do not belong, then save the XML file.

Screaming Frog documents this workflow in its XML sitemap generator tutorial. Its documentation says the free Lite edition supports up to 500 URLs; product limits can change, so confirm the current limit before relying on it.

Code: crawl internal links with Scrapy

For a repeatable workflow, a Scrapy spider can begin at a seed URL, parse pages, and return requests for links it discovers. Restrict it to the intended domain using the spider’s allowed-domain constraint, and add your own rules for URL normalization and sitemap eligibility. See the Scrapy spider documentation for spider structure and callbacks.

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A production crawler should also set a sensible request rate, honor applicable access rules, avoid crawling outside the site scope, and record enough response and page metadata to make informed inclusion decisions. Scrapy’s framework provides the crawling mechanics; the canonical and eligibility policy remains yours to define.

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Filter the crawl into URLs that belong in a sitemap

Do not submit every URL a crawler discovers. A sitemap should identify preferred canonical URLs, not every duplicate, tracking variant, or technical endpoint. Google recommends choosing the canonical URL when equivalent content is available at multiple URLs. Google’s sitemap overview describes the sitemap’s role as a discovery hint, not a guarantee of crawling or indexing.

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  • Stay in scope: include only the intended site or host. Decide deliberately whether subdomains are in scope.
  • Normalize duplicates: apply a consistent preferred scheme and hostname, remove fragments, and strip tracking or session parameters when they do not identify distinct content.
  • Check canonical targets: retain the preferred canonical page rather than alternate URLs that point to it.
  • Check eligibility: review response status, robots restrictions, noindex signals, duplication, and whether the page is intended as a search landing page.
  • Exclude non-page URLs when appropriate: redirects, errors, and assets are usually not page entries. Include specialized media content only when you are intentionally using the relevant sitemap extension.

Screaming Frog’s documented default XML output includes internal HTML pages returning 200 responses and excludes redirects, errors, robots.txt-blocked pages, noindex pages, canonicalized URLs, paginated URLs, and PDFs. Those defaults are examples of one tool’s behavior, not a universal sitemap policy; verify the rules against your site’s canonical tags and search goals.

Write the sitemap as XML or plain text

XML is the most versatile format, particularly when you need sitemap extensions for images, video, news, or alternate-language pages. If you only need to list page URLs, Google also supports a plain text file with one fully qualified URL per line. See Google’s format and creation guidance.

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XML structure

A basic XML sitemap uses a <urlset> root element and a <url> entry for each page, with its location in <loc>. Escape XML special characters in tag values. Add <lastmod> only when you have a consistently accurate modification date; do not invent dates. Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq>.

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page/</loc>
  </url>
</urlset>

Replace the example URL with an eligible canonical URL from your crawl. For more than a small set of pages, generate the XML programmatically rather than editing entries by hand, and validate the result before publishing.

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Plain text structure

For a URL-only sitemap, save one fully qualified URL per line in a text file, for example:

https://example.com/
https://example.com/about/
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Use this crawl-to-sitemap implementation checklist

  1. Choose a valid seed page and explicit host scope.
  2. Fetch pages at a sensible rate, extract internal links, and track visited URLs to prevent loops.
  3. Normalize scheme, host, fragments, and irrelevant query parameters consistently.
  4. Record response status, canonical target, robots and noindex signals, and last-modified data if available.
  5. Select unique canonical URLs that respond successfully and are intended for search discovery.
  6. Escape XML values and serialize the selected URLs into <urlset> entries; add <lastmod> only when reliable.
  7. Validate the file’s syntax, URL scope, duplicates, response status, and inclusion policy before deployment.

This is an implementation outline, not a tested, drop-in crawler. Scrapy documents the spider and request patterns; the rules for canonical selection and sitemap filtering should be tailored to the site.

Publish the file and verify that search engines can access it

  1. Put the sitemap at a stable, publicly accessible URL, such as https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
  2. Add a fully qualified directive to the appropriate robots.txt, for example Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml, or submit the sitemap in Google Search Console.
  3. Open Search Console’s Sitemaps report and review access or processing errors.

A robots.txt file’s rules apply only to the protocol, host, and port where that file is served. Its sitemap directive identifies a sitemap location; it does not grant crawling permission. Google’s robots.txt guidance covers scope and sitemap directives. Submitting a sitemap can help discovery, but it does not guarantee that URLs will be crawled or indexed.

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Or skip the browser setup

If you need a screenshot of a page while checking a crawl or documenting an issue, ScreenshotNeo can return an image or PDF from one API request. For a sitemap workflow, it complements rather than replaces the crawler: it captures pages but does not discover and filter a site’s URLs into a sitemap.

curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://example.com -o shot.webp

See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for request options. Before capture, it accepts consent banners and removes more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets; each step can be turned off. Bot checks or CAPTCHAs, blank pages, timeouts, failed loads, and cache hits are not billed, and response headers identify the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server lets AI agents use screenshot and PDF-capture tools. The free plan includes 1,000 screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 screenshots.

Sign up for ScreenshotNeo’s free plan to get 1,000 screenshots a month with no card.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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