Understand the idea

A generator can turn discovered links into a useful first draft. It cannot know every page you intended to publish or decide every indexing choice for you.

sitemap.download is another independent project by Mario V.W.B.R. Obst, the author of HTML code FYI. This connection is stated openly. You can also use a CMS-generated sitemap, a build-generated sitemap or the manual approach; this lesson does not require the tool.

Read the example

This is a workflow description, not a live crawler. No URL is submitted to the generator from this lesson.

Workflow · EXAMPLE
Choose the public starting URL
→ Select Page URLs or Images
→ Generate and inspect the crawl activity
→ Download the XML
→ Review addresses, omissions and duplicates
→ Publish and verify the deployed file

1. Choose a suitable starting point

Open sitemap.download (new tab) in its separate tab. Enter a public http or https address for a website you own or have permission to crawl. Do not enter private links, credentials or URLs containing access tokens.

2. Choose what you want to map

Select Page URLs for a page sitemap or Images for the image mode. The interface is available without an account. These instructions describe the interface reviewed in September 2026; check the current tool’s notices before use.

3. Generate and read the activity

Use Generate Sitemap and keep the tab open while it works. The documented limit is 500 page attempts, not a guarantee of 500 successfully included pages. Failed pages are skipped. The starting page’s redirects establish the crawl origin; subdomains and different protocols are treated as different origins.

4. Understand what discovery misses

The tool follows HTML links on the same origin. It cannot discover unlinked pages, sign-in pages, blocked pages or links created only by JavaScript. Image mode reads HTML image attributes, including common responsive and lazy-loading attributes; it does not inspect stylesheets or execute scripts. An image entry belongs to its containing page, so do not mistake the result for an ordinary page-only sitemap.

This version does not interpret robots.txt rules. Read the target site’s crawl policy and use the tool only with appropriate permission. A generator’s technical ability to request a page is not permission to crawl it.

5. Understand where requests go

The browser organises the crawl, while a proxy handles page requests. This is not an entirely browser-local operation: the service participates in fetching the public pages. The tool describes crawl data as tab-scoped. That statement is not a promise that hosting infrastructure processes no request data. Read the generator’s privacy information (new tab) before starting. Merely reading this HTML code FYI lesson does not launch a crawl.

6. Review the downloaded XML

  • Does it parse as XML, with the expected sitemap namespace?
  • Do the page URLs use the intended host and preferred addresses?
  • Are there duplicates, redirects, errors or noindex pages to remove?
  • Are expected pages missing because they were unlinked or not reached?
  • If dates are present, do they reflect actual page changes?

7. Publish and verify

Place the reviewed file on your own site, inspect the deployed XML and point to it from robots.txt or the relevant webmaster tools. Repeat the review after structural changes. A downloaded file is a snapshot, not a promise of continuing synchronisation.

Understand the XML first · Try the review exercise · See Things I’ve built · Return to the publishing learning path.

A small mistake, explained

What goes wrong

Treating a finished crawl as proof that every desired page is present and every listed entry belongs in the final sitemap.

How to fix it. Compare the output with your known page inventory and desired public URLs. Check failed attempts, origin boundaries and links the crawler could not discover. Correct the output or choose a generation method that knows your full page list.

Try it yourself

For a small public site you own, list the pages you expect before using a generator. Compare that list with the output. Explain one possible reason for an omitted page without assuming that the generator is broken.

Further reading

sitemap.download — Mario’s independent generator (new tab)

Sitemaps.org: XML format and limits (new tab)

Google Search Central: Building and submitting sitemaps (new tab)

Original explanation and example prepared for HTML code FYI with AI assistance. Test the code in your own context. How these guides are made.