Sitemap Path Explorer

About

I built Sitemap Path Explorer because finding a specific page on a large website is often harder than it should be. Menus show what a site wants you to see, and site search depends on how the site was built. But most sites publish a sitemap, a plain list of their pages for search engines, and it’s often the most complete map of a site there is. This extension turns that list into something you can actually use: a clean, searchable tree in Chrome’s Side Panel.

Open the panel on a site and it finds the site’s sitemaps through robots.txt (falling back to /sitemap.xml), follows sitemap indexes up to five levels deep, and builds a tree that mirrors the site’s structure. Hyphenated URL slugs become readable names, and folders that the sitemap leaves out are filled in so the hierarchy stays connected.

What you can do

• Search by page name. Type part of a name (not case-sensitive). With several words, a page must match all of them. Matches are highlighted and the tree opens to show them. Use the counter and the ▲ / ▼ buttons to jump between matches. It’s handy when you know the vocabulary of a site, like “average” or “aggregate” on a statistics site.
• Browse the tree. Open a folder with the arrow beside it. Click a page name to open it in a new tab.
• Pin a site (📌). Keep one site’s tree loaded in the panel while you browse other tabs. Click the pin again to unpin, and the tree follows the site in your active tab.
• Keep the tree honest. If a link you open from the tree returns a 404 or 410, the link is removed and its tab closes automatically. A 401 or 403 flags the link as needing a login.
• See what a site asks crawlers to avoid. Pages disallowed by the site’s robots.txt, along with a short built-in list of admin and system paths, appear greyed out and can’t be clicked. Blocked doesn’t mean the page doesn’t exist.

Good to know

• It works on sites that publish a sitemap (in robots.txt or at /sitemap.xml). Search matches page names taken from URLs, not page content.
• Limits: it reads up to about 250,000 URLs per site (50 MB per sitemap file, 60 seconds per load) and displays up to 50,000 nodes.
• It doesn't run on chrome:// pages, local files, extension pages, or major search engines.
• Very large sites (hundreds of thousands of pages) can go past these limits. When that happens, no tree is built for that site.
• Text (.txt) and compressed (.gz) sitemaps aren’t supported yet. If a site lists one, the panel shows “Text and gzip sitemap formats are not supported yet.” and no tree is built.
• It requires desktop Google Chrome 114 or newer. Other browsers aren’t supported.

How it's built

The part I'm proudest of is the engine. The tree is built by a small Rust program compiled to WebAssembly. It keeps its data in flat arrays that the panel reads directly, rather than building thousands of objects, and it sorts folders ahead of pages. The limits above keep every load bounded.

Getting started

1. Install the free extension from the Chrome Web Store.
2. Buy your license on Gumroad (one-time payment). Your key arrives in your receipt email and on your Gumroad content page.
3. Click the extension's icon in Chrome's toolbar to open the side panel. If you don’t see it, click the puzzle-piece icon and pin the extension.
4. Paste your license key and click Activate Extension. A key looks like XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX.
5. Visit any website and the panel builds that site's tree from its sitemap.

Your license

• Finding your key: use the “View License Key and Info” button in your Gumroad receipt email, or the content page it links to. If you bought with a Gumroad account, you can also find it in your Gumroad Library. If you bought as a guest, Gumroad’s license lookup can email it to you. Keep your receipt email, since it’s your way back to your key.
• Asked for your key again? This happens after a reinstall, a new computer, or clearing browsing data. It can also happen if the extension couldn’t reach Gumroad for about a week, or if the license is no longer valid. Enter the same key again. The extension re-checks your license about once a day and when Chrome starts, and it keeps working through short offline stretches.
• Messages you might see:
  • Invalid license key. The key wasn't recognized. Check for typos or extra characters, and make sure it's the key for this extension.
  • License revoked. The purchase was refunded, charged back, or disputed.
  • Could not contact Gumroad. Please try again. A temporary network or service problem. Try again in a few minutes.
• Devices: Your license is for your personal use on your own devices. Please don't share your key or post it publicly. If a key is being shared, I may deactivate it.
• Refunds: I offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. If Sitemap Path Explorer doesn't work for you, email arnav.sitemapexplorersupport@gmail.com within 30 days of purchase for a full refund. A refunded license stops working.
• Updates arrive automatically through the Chrome Web Store and are included in your purchase.

Troubleshooting

• “No sitemap.xml found on this site.” The site may not publish a sitemap. Try opening its-address.com/sitemap.xml in a tab to check. Some sites also block automated requests.
• “This site’s sitemap requires a login or subscription.” The extension requests sitemaps the way a logged-out visitor would, and never uses your login. Login screens and pages behind a login may show no tree.
• “Sitemap(s) for this site are too vast. Tree cannot be generated.” or “Sitemap load took too long.” The site went past the limits listed under Good to know.
• “Text and gzip sitemap formats are not supported yet.” The site lists a .txt or .gz sitemap, which this version can’t read. No tree is built for that site.
• The panel is empty on some pages. The extension doesn’t run on browser pages, local files, or search engines (see Good to know).
• The tree looks incomplete. Very large sites may show only part of the tree because of the display limit.
• A link opened the home page. Some sites send missing pages to their home page instead of returning a 404, so those links can’t always be detected as broken.
• A tab closed on its own. That’s intentional: a link you opened from the tree returned a 404 or 410.
• Searches on very large sitemaps can take a moment. A longer, more specific word narrows results faster.
• The panel shows an error or won’t load. Reopen it, then reload the extension from chrome://extensions or restart Chrome.

Ratings and discoverability

Privacy and contact

Read the privacy policy. It’s also linked from the Chrome Web Store listing, the Gumroad product and content pages, and the extension’s license screen. If the policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, a notice appears at the top of this page for 30 days.