Create XML Sitemaps with A1 Sitemap Generator

This tutorial will explain how to create XML sitemaps using A1 Sitemap Generator. We use default settings such as automated calculation of priority values. If you are interested in some of the advanced options or the command line interface for scheduling and automation, you can always check the help.

Crawl entire website first
Before building the XML sitemap, A1 Sitemap Generator needs to scan your website. If you want certain areas restricted, you can either create custom crawler filters or tick options for obeying no-index, no-follow, robots.txt etc. With most websites, you only need to set root path of your website followed by clicking start scan.

Website analysis and links check
After the site scan is done, you can view the website structure and detailed information for the individual pages. These tools can help you solve various website problems related to crawling. When you are done, click the Create sitemap tab.

Building the XML sitemap
In the dropdown, pick XML Sitemap and click build sitemap. The XML Sitemaps Protocol has some limits to max number of urls per XML sitemap file. However, if exceeded, A1 Sitemap Generator will automatically split all URLs out to multiple XML sitemaps and create an XML sitemap index file.

Final steps for your XML sitemap
At this point, you can choose to upload your XML Sitemap. You can also ping and update it to various search engines such as Google. If you haven’t already, it is also a good idea to create a robots.txt file with a reference to your generated XML sitemap.

XML Sitemaps and priority values »

Comments

Comment from Anubhav
Time: December 14, 2008, 7:30 am

I am not able to filter certain portons of my website

Comment from admin
Time: January 4, 2009, 12:58 pm

I am always recommend checking support, but else try check this help page about “List filters”: http://www.micro-sys.dk/products/sitemap-generator/help/website-crawler-output-filters.html

Comment from alis
Time: January 30, 2009, 7:53 am

http://www.handbag86.com/sitemap.xml how i can know my sitemap is work,?

Comment from admin
Time: February 1, 2009, 9:50 am

It does not seem you generated it with A1 Sitemap Generator (since I see the sitemap uses values like 0.80 where the official sitemaps protocol only uses values like 0.1 … 0.8, 0.9 etc.)

However, that said. If after submitting to Google webmaster tools are not getting any errors from them, then everything is probably allright

Comment from Érico
Time: February 14, 2009, 10:39 am

Hi,

How can i scan all my sub-domains?
like:
I use ulr http://www.example.com
and want also scan:
123.example.com
abc.example.com
171t17.example.com
etc…
I have thousands of sub domains that i can’t list one by one.

Comment from admin
Time: February 16, 2009, 2:43 pm

Unfortunately the sitemaps protocol defines one sitemap per subdomain/domain. Possibly A1 Sitemap Generator will support scanning multiple websites *at once* in the future.

Comment from Paul
Time: April 20, 2009, 2:48 am

Why does the Sitemap generator only see the index.html and not the rest of the pages?

Comment from admin
Time: April 20, 2009, 3:26 am

You website depends on Javascript in its links. That means you will have to enable some options in A1 Sitemap Generator before you start website crawl:

Scan website | Crawler website |
Try search for linked in Javascript and CSS (simple)
Try search for linked in Javascript and CSS (extended)

Comment from RCH.INC
Time: May 11, 2009, 10:43 pm

http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml how i can know my sitemap is work
(real URL changed by admin)

Comment from admin
Time: May 12, 2009, 1:43 am

It seems you had not uploaded the sitemap file as your server gave 404?
I recommend you check all the tutorials on this website to gain a better understanding of uploading and submitting XML sitemaps.

Comment from Minesh Vasantlal Modi
Time: May 12, 2009, 10:40 pm

I am not able to crwal my portal which is having more than 300000 pages. And also guide me how to crwal only specific directory? say for example i want to creat sitemap for http://www.easy2source.com/products/.
Regards.
Minesh

Comment from batya sela
Time: June 22, 2009, 6:13 am

hello
What doe’s it mean’ when I do xml sitemap and I get 0 as a code?
thank you
batya

Comment from Zully
Time: August 18, 2009, 12:45 am

Hi,
Can a text version of site map be crated for this classifieds site: http://www.bestfreeads.co.uk
Thanks

Comment from admin
Time: August 18, 2009, 8:21 am

There should be no problem in creating text sitemaps!
Nor any problems in scanning your website

Comment from babona.com
Time: September 29, 2009, 6:02 am

great info , created a sitemap.xml for my site , http://www.babona.com
thanks for great help

Comment from prince
Time: October 3, 2009, 3:35 am

can i use it for css gallery website which is will create in future like http://cssbeauty.com, http://cssleaf.com, http;//cssdrive.com etc

Comment from admin
Time: October 4, 2009, 12:55 pm

Sure you can prince. If you experience any problem as all, please let support know. But there should be no problem at all

Comment from DUDU
Time: October 27, 2009, 11:08 pm

Hello, I just completed a scan for a site, which has lots of webpages. It appears not all webpages were scanned (although some few thousands were scanned) and some have a question mark next to the result. How should I proceed from here?

Comment from Kompiuteriai
Time: January 19, 2010, 10:33 am

Very good tool.

Comment from Kitchen Cabinet Kings
Time: January 25, 2010, 8:39 pm

Do you have any idea why it didn’t crawl any of my resources/ pages or resources.html page? I’m so confused. Is there any way to check what pages it is going to put in the sitemap?

Comment from admin
Time: January 26, 2010, 9:33 am

Check this article about understanding links found

I took a look and seems you use nofollow links which A1SG defaults to obey.

I emailed you a project file that should fix your problems

Comment from Shahi
Time: February 17, 2010, 12:56 am

This Program is very good. i used it.
But i must to learn more
http://www.didani.net

Comment from andy
Time: February 22, 2010, 12:51 am

Hi, i have quite a few links, just started the process of making an xml sitemap.Is it possible to pause this and restart it the following day if it takes a while to scan my whole site and links?…thanks.

Comment from admin
Time: February 22, 2010, 4:28 pm

Sure, check this article about how to use resume

If you can’t find the options, it’s probably because you need to switch off easy mode

Comment from jeetu
Time: March 21, 2010, 8:25 am

can i submit my sitemap as feed to google ??

Comment from admin
Time: March 21, 2010, 9:22 am

Hi,

Not sure I understand you correctly. XML sitemaps has to be submitted as XML sitemap. And RSS feeds as feeds. You can generate both kinds with A1 Sitemap Generator. Hope this helps. Feel free to ask in http://webhelpforums.com as well!

Comment from wenster
Time: April 4, 2010, 9:12 am

A good program.

Comment from wenster
Time: April 4, 2010, 9:14 am

A good program. http://www.xinlingxiu.com

Comment from Allen
Time: April 19, 2010, 8:14 am

Hello -

I’m looking to generate a video sitemap.

I ran the scan on my site for almost 17 hours and it was never finished. Finally I stopped it and then tried to build the video sitemap but the sitemap only contains this…

We have hundreds of videos on the site so I’m confused on what happened here. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Allen

Comment from Allen
Time: April 19, 2010, 8:17 am

weird here it is without the “<". maybe it will post now.

?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?
urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"
/urlset

Comment from admin
Time: April 19, 2010, 5:52 pm

Answered across email