So, here’s the thing—if you’re trying to win the traffic and visibility game online, keeping one eye on your competitors isn’t sneaky. It’s smart. You’re not just chasing rankings—you’re trying to understand what’s working for others, what might be coming next, and where your team could outsmart the rest. And oddly enough, one of the most straightforward sources of all that info is something most marketers barely think about. But once you harness the power of sitemaps, you’ll feel more in control and confident in your competitive strategy.
Yep. Sitemaps.
Those plain-looking .xml files, quietly sitting in public view, can tell you heaps. Stuff like which pages a site really cares about, how their content’s structured, what topics they’re leaning into, and how often they update things. If you’re working on SEO, content strategy, or even just trying to figure out where to go next with your site—this isn’t fluff. It’s the kind of data that gives you answers, not just ideas.
Do you really need another pricey SaaS subscription or some slow-moving agency report? Honestly, no. You could build your own sitemap extraction tool for free, and it doesn’t need to be overly technical, either. These days, you don’t need to code a single line. Just set it up once and let it run quietly in the background, serving up insights every time a competitor makes a move. It’s a process that’s designed to make you feel at ease and comfortable, not overwhelmed.
What You Can Actually Do With This (Spoiler: It’s a Lot)
Let’s talk about what happens when you’ve got this thing working. Instead of reacting to what’s already ranking, you start spotting changes as they happen. You go from “oh, that’s interesting” to “let’s get ahead of this.” It’s basically like swapping out your fogged-up mirror for a clear, live feed of the road ahead.
With a no-code tool, you can pull in the entire structure of any site that shares a public sitemap—which, by the way, is most of them. Retailers, publishers, B2B sites, SaaS apps—if they’re online, chances are they’ve got one. From that, you can map out all their key content areas, get a feel for how their site’s built, and see what types of pages they’re banking on most.
Say you’re comparing two online stores. One has a dozen solid, SEO-friendly category pages. The other? Just five—and none of them link to each other appropriately. That’s not just a content choice—it’s an opportunity for you to go bigger and better and win the clicks they’re missing. Or maybe a competitor starts pushing a new blog series around a topic you hadn’t even considered. With regular sitemap tracking, you’ll spot it before Google fully catches on.
Then there’s reporting. Once your tool pulls the data, you can send it straight into something like Google Sheets, Notion, or even a dashboard tool. Want a list of newly added pages every week? Set it and forget it. Want to track how their site structure evolves over time?
Easy. Need a simple way to update your team? Sorted.
And it’s not just a “tech thing”—it works across the board:
- Marketing managers get fresh, reliable intel without shelling out for expensive tools or waiting on monthly reports.
- Digital marketers can close content gaps before competitors pull ahead.
- Business managers get a clearer view of where they might be slipping behind and what to do about it.
For anyone serious about staying sharp in SEO, this isn’t just helpful—it’s a bit overdue.
So, let’s say someone on your team drops in a website link. That’s it. From there, the whole system kicks off—no coding, no drama, just a few innovative steps that turn one URL into a fully mapped sitemap laid out neatly in a spreadsheet. It’s a process that’s designed to save you time and make you feel more efficient and productive.
Here’s how it plays out:
Step 1: Start with a form or webhook
A team member pops in a homepage URL—either through a quick form or something connected to a Google Sheet. It doesn’t really matter how; it just matters that the link goes in, and the automation kicks off from there.
Step 2: Clean up the URL
Then, the automation pulls the domain out of the entire link. This helps name the file, keep things tidy, and makes tracking multiple sites way less messy.
Step 3: Spot the sitemap
Now comes a quick bit of JavaScript. It figures out the sitemap URL, usually something like /sitemap.xml, without you needing to guess. It does this by scanning the site’s structure and identifying the file that contains the sitemap. There is no need to poke around manually—it just finds it.
Step 4: Check for more sitemaps
Some sites don’t just have one. They’ve got a main sitemap that links out to more—for blogs, products, categories, etc. This step grabs all of those so you can go deeper.
Step 5: Fire up the spreadsheet
Next, it opens a fresh Google Sheet. One tab is set up for the main sitemap, which is ready to store the index of all the sub-sitemaps.
Step 6: Grab all the URLs
Then, it loops through each of those sub-sitemaps, creating a new tab for each one. All the URLs get dropped in—usually with extra info like the last time they were updated.
By the time it’s done, you’ve got a spreadsheet where everything is split out: a top-level view, plus a tab for every section of the site. You didn’t have to touch a single thing.
The ActivePieces automation workflow
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. That spreadsheet? You can take it and pull it into draw.io to sketch out the structure of a competitor’s site. Or load it into Google Data Studio to start spotting patterns—like when they’re publishing more, or which sections they’re building out over time.
What this really does is take the fear out of building internal tools. You don’t need to be a dev. You just need a few no-code building blocks—like a form, a script or two (which can be easily generated using tools like Google Apps Script), and Google Sheets. That’s it.
And this setup? It grows with you. Want to track ten sites? Duplicate the flow. Do you want to include the last modified date for pages? Most sitemaps already show that, so map it into your sheet—no need to rebuild anything. As your needs evolve, you can easily modify the setup to accommodate more sites, additional data points, or new features.
Once your sitemap extraction tool is running, the value stacks up fast. What starts as a list of URLs quickly turns into something more useful—like a timeline of what your competitors are building, tweaking, or prioritising.
And if you’re wondering what actually to do with all that data, you’re not stuck. We’ve covered plenty of practical use cases in our previous post on how sitemap extraction automates data collection for small businesses and digital agencies. It’s packed with ideas for turning raw sitemap data into actions—from benchmarking content and spotting content gaps to feeding directly into planning workflows.
This setup doesn’t need to be reinvented from scratch either. You can download our ready-to-use ActivePieces automation template to get started in minutes. It includes all the key pieces: a webhook trigger, JavaScript steps to fetch sitemap data, and a Google Sheets integration that lays everything out for easy viewing.
👉 Download the ActivePieces Sitemap Automation Template
Set it up once, plug in your competitor URLs, and let it do the work in the background—so you can spend more time on strategy, not spreadsheet admin.
Strategic Research and Planning
So, here’s the thing—when you monitor sitemap changes regularly, it’s a bit like having early access to what your competitors are planning. New content themes? You’ll probably spot them. Quiet product launches? That, too. It’s public data, totally fair game, and surprisingly revealing once you know what to look for.
Say you’re tracking a handful of eComm brands. After a couple of months, one of them starts dropping fresh landing pages built around seasonal search terms—stuff like “EOFY deals” or “Mother’s Day gifts”. What does that tell you? Well, for starters, they’re leaning into seasonal SEO. And if they’re doing that, odds are they’ve got the content and campaigns lined up to match. That little breadcrumb trail? It’s practically a playbook.
Or maybe your system picks up five new pages focused on something niche—say, “low-FODMAP snacks” or “retro car tees”. That kind of move usually means one of two things: they’re testing new keywords or soft-launching a product line. Either way, it’s a signal. And once you’ve seen it, you’ve got a head start.
Then there’s the stuff they’re not doing. Maybe none of them have SEO-friendly category pages. Perhaps they haven’t touched their old content in ages. Every gap you spot is a chance to do it better—and rank higher—before they catch up.
For teams working on campaign plans or quarterly content calendars, this kind of tracking can quietly do a lot of the heavy lifting. You’ll notice when publishing ramps up. You’ll see which content types get the most attention—guides, product hubs, whatever. Instead of guessing, you’re actually working with proof.
And it’s useful across the board:
- Strategy leads start to see where the competition’s heading before it’s obvious.
- Content teams get clear signals on what topics are trending or where to push next.
- Product folks might even catch wind of launches before the press releases go live.
The longer the tool runs, the more valuable it gets. What starts as a list of URLs slowly turns into a timeline—and from that timeline, patterns take shape. Eventually, it’s not just about pages. It’s about being first to act.
So, where does this all land?
A sitemap extractor might sound like a backend thing, but really, it’s a low-lift way to help teams move quicker and think sharper. Most marketers aren’t looking here, which makes the edge even sharper. You’re using free, public info to track site structure, content strategy, and publishing momentum—without waiting around or overspending.
Whether you’re running SEO, leading marketing, or trying to steer a smarter business roadmap, this kind of visibility gives you something you can actually build on—more signals and less speculation.
And honestly, the setup is dead simple. It’s no-code, low-cost, and probably runs on stuff you’re already using.
The teams that tend to win? They don’t wait for change. They spot it early—and they ship before anyone else does.
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