The short version
A sitemap generator discovers your pages by following internal links from the homepage, then writes them into XML in the format search engines expect. Its output is only as complete as your internal linking: a page nothing links to will not be found, which is itself worth knowing.
What a crawler can and cannot find
A generator starts at your homepage, reads every link, follows the ones on your own domain, and repeats. That is the same method a search engine uses, which makes the output genuinely informative rather than just convenient.
The consequence is that a page nothing links to will not appear. If you know a page exists and the crawl misses it, you have found an orphan page, and no sitemap will fix the underlying problem. A page your own site does not link to is a page your site is telling search engines not to care about.
Pages built entirely in the browser are the other gap. If your navigation is assembled by JavaScript rather than delivered as links in the HTML, a simple crawler sees very little. That is worth knowing for its own sake, because search engines have the same difficulty, just less of it.
- Found: anything reachable by following ordinary links from your homepage
- Missed: orphan pages nothing links to
- Missed: pages behind a login or a form submission
- Missed: navigation that only exists after JavaScript runs
Why it strips tracking parameters
Left alone, a crawl produces the same page five times with different query strings attached, because your own site links to it with utm tags from a campaign, a gclid from an ad, or a session parameter.
Every one of those is technically a different URL and none of them belong in a sitemap. Listing them tells search engines you consider five variants of one page canonical, which is the opposite of what a sitemap is for.
So the generator drops the common tracking parameters before recording a URL. If your site genuinely uses query strings to serve different content, such as a filtered product listing, be aware that this deduplication may collapse pages you wanted separately, and a plugin-generated sitemap will handle that case better.
The 40-page limit, and when you need more
This tool crawls up to 40 pages. That is a deliberate ceiling, not a teaser: crawling an arbitrary stranger's website without limit is not something anyone can responsibly give away, and 40 pages covers most brochure sites, local business sites, and small portfolios completely.
If your site is larger, do not use a one-off generator at all. Use something that regenerates automatically, because a sitemap you build by hand today is wrong the moment you publish anything. On WordPress, the core software has produced one at wp-sitemap.xml since version 5.5, and the major SEO plugins produce better ones. Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow all generate sitemaps for you.
The honest recommendation for most people reading this is therefore: check whether you already have one before generating anything. Our sitemap checker will tell you in a few seconds.
What to do with the file
Two steps, and the second is the one people skip.
Upload the XML to your site root so it is reachable at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. How you do that depends entirely on your host, and on a managed platform you may not be able to, which is another reason to prefer the platform's own sitemap.
Then declare it. Add a line reading Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml to your robots.txt, and submit it in Google Search Console. The robots.txt line is what lets any crawler find it without guessing; the Search Console submission is what lets you see whether Google actually read it and what it made of the URLs inside.
Questions about this tool
How many pages will it crawl?+
Up to 40. That covers most small business and brochure sites completely. Larger sites should use a sitemap that regenerates itself rather than a one-off file.
It missed a page I know exists. Why?+
Most likely nothing on your site links to it, which makes it an orphan page and a real problem worth fixing. It may also be behind a login, or reachable only through JavaScript navigation.
Do I even need to generate one?+
Probably not. WordPress has produced one at wp-sitemap.xml since 5.5, and Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow all generate sitemaps automatically. Check what you already have before making a new one.
Where do I put the file?+
At your site root, so it resolves at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Then add a Sitemap line to robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console.
Why were my URL parameters removed?+
Tracking parameters like utm_source and gclid create duplicate URLs for the same page, and listing them undermines the sitemap's purpose. If your site uses query strings to serve genuinely different content, a platform-generated sitemap will handle that better.