Sitemap Finder

Discover all XML sitemaps for any website by checking common file paths, parsing robots.txt directives, and scanning HTML content. Provide one or more URLs and get a complete inventory of every sitemap, validated and classified.

Features

• Multi-source discovery — checks 15+ common sitemap paths, robots.txt directives, and HTML <a> / <link> tags
• Batch processing — process multiple websites in a single run with configurable concurrency
• Recursive index traversal — follows sitemap index files to discover all nested child sitemaps
• Gzip support — handles .xml.gz compressed sitemaps automatically
• XML validation — verifies sitemaps contain valid XML and classifies them as index or urlset
• Rich metadata — reports URL count per sitemap, last modified date, discovery source, and validation status

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
urls	string[]	—	Website URLs to check (e.g., ["https://example.com"])
url	string	—	Single URL for backward compatibility. Merged into urls if both are set.
findAll	boolean	true	Find all sitemaps or stop after the first one
followIndexes	boolean	true	Recursively follow sitemap index files to discover child sitemaps
verify	boolean	true	Verify sitemaps are valid XML and extract metadata
timeout	integer	10	HTTP request timeout in seconds
concurrency	integer	3	Max concurrent website processing (1–20)

Example Input

{
    "urls": ["https://example.com", "https://crawlee.dev"],
    "findAll": true,
    "followIndexes": true,
    "verify": true,
    "timeout": 10,
    "concurrency": 3
}

Output

Results are stored in the default dataset. Each record represents a discovered sitemap:

{
    "websiteUrl": "https://crawlee.dev",
    "sitemapUrl": "https://crawlee.dev/sitemap.xml",
    "type": "index",
    "urlCount": 4,
    "lastModified": "2024-12-15T10:30:00Z",
    "isValid": true,
    "source": "common-location"
}

Field	Description
websiteUrl	The input website URL
sitemapUrl	Full URL of the discovered sitemap
type	Sitemap type: index (contains other sitemaps), urlset (contains page URLs), or unknown
urlCount	Number of entries in the sitemap (child sitemaps for indexes, page URLs for urlsets)
lastModified	Most recent <lastmod> date found in the sitemap
isValid	Whether the sitemap contains valid XML
source	How the sitemap was discovered: common-location, robots.txt, html-content, or index:<parent-url>
error	Error message if the lookup failed (only present on error records)

When no sitemaps are found for a URL, a single record is returned with sitemapUrl: null and an appropriate error message.

API Usage

Call the actor via the API and retrieve results from the default dataset:

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/YOUR_USERNAME~find-sitemap-from-url/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"urls": ["https://example.com"]}'

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event (PPE) pricing:

Event	Cost
sitemap-lookup	$0.001 per URL processed

You are charged once per input URL, regardless of how many sitemaps are discovered for that URL. There are no additional platform fees beyond the per-event charge.

Use Cases

• SEO auditing — verify sitemap coverage and freshness across your sites
• Web scraping — discover all available sitemaps before crawling to plan efficient scraping
• Site monitoring — track sitemap changes, URL counts, and last modified dates over time
• Competitor analysis — map out a competitor's site structure via their sitemaps
• Migration validation — confirm sitemaps are correctly set up after a site migration
• Content indexing — find all content endpoints for search engine optimization

Discovery Methods

The actor uses three complementary discovery strategies:

1. Common paths — checks 15+ well-known sitemap file locations (/sitemap.xml, /wp-sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, etc.)
2. robots.txt — parses Sitemap: directives from the site's robots.txt file
3. HTML scanning — searches the homepage HTML for <a> and <link> tags referencing sitemaps

When followIndexes is enabled, any discovered sitemap index is recursively expanded to reveal all child sitemaps.