Help
G-Mapper Quick Start Guide Installation Firstly you need to fill in your email address to download the plugin. We’ll then email you a download link.
Windows Download Run the installation package accepting the defaults. The G-Mapper installer should automatically detect your system specification and allow you to install any missing required components.
More details on system requirements and install process can be found on the installation support page.
Main toolbar In general you can carry out all the key functions from the main menu including:
What is a sitemap? Sitemaps are a vital component of website maintainance and SEO, serving as a means to communicate with search engines and facilitate the discovery of web content. In addition to the ubiquitous XML sitemaps, this document will also touch upon other formats such as RSS and HTML sitemaps.
As well as the list of pages you can advise search engines on when the page was last updated, how often it is updated and the relative priority of each page within your website.
Installing G-Mapper for Windows System requirements G-Mapper is a simple application, requiring minimal resources, although larger websites will require more memory and disk space. It is recommended you have a fast (low latency) reliable internet connection.
Recommend computer setup :
A relatively modern multi-core processor 8 GB or more of total system RAM 100Mb or more available hard disk space Microsoft Windows 8.0 and above. Windows 10 is recommended. G-Mapper may work on older or newer systems such as Windows 7 or 11 but is untested.
XML Sitemap Example If you are familiar with RSS feeds you can think of an XML sitemap a bit like a special RSS feed for all of your website. An XML sitemap uses XML to represent all the pages of your website in a structured format to provide search engines with important information about the content of your website .
The Sitemap protocol is an open standard supported by the main search engines including Google, Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Baidu and more.
Configuring your G-mapper Sitemap Creating a new map Once you have installed G-Mapper run it.
Click on the new button to add a new sitemap setup.
Editing an existing map To configure an existing map simply use the open button and select the map you wish to edit.
Then click on the settings button.
Basic sitemap settings The minimum details for any sitemap is the website title and website address beginning with http:// or https://
General XML Sitemap Help and Support This section covers general help and support information relating to XML sitemaps.
G-mapper Sitemap Options The Sitemap Options page allows you to configure some key settings.
Set which page element you want to use for the title field in your RSS sitemap. This can be the page meta tag or a page element. You may need to exclude certain query string parameters if your site uses query strings for tracking sessions. Set default inclusion rules. By default, G-Mapper includes all pages, but you can untick this and specify particular extensions.
Which is the best XML Sitemap Generator for you? There are a range of sitemap generators available for your website and they come in a number of forms. Online spiders, tools to download and run on your PC as well as scripts to install on your server. Which sitemap generator is best for you will depend on your circumstances.
Some questions to think about when choosing your sitemap generator include:
Filtering sitemap pages in G-mapper Use this screen to filter pages out of your sitemap.
You can use (ANSI-92) wildcards in simple fitler expressions filter partial filenames and filename patterns or more complex regular expressions.
Add one filter per line.
You can find more information about filtering and rules on our Filtering help page.
Image sitemap settings Use these settings to configure if and how images are included in your sitemap. You can set various inclusion/exclusion rules and for more advanced filtering use regular expressions.
Primerily you can include images on wether images have an alt and/or title tag, or include all images.
You can also set what image file extensions to include.
Images can also be filtered using rules which support (ANSI-92) wildcards.
Basic HTML concepts This page provides basic information about key HTML concepts which are helpful when it comes to sitemaps and how our spider processes your website.
Head meta tags In the header of your page there can sometimes be tags that direct search engines and our spider. For most pages you will want it to index and follow. Our spider automatically follows these rules.
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> Links and query strings The XmlSitemapGenerator will follow all standard links such as the below example
Robots.txt sitemap entries The robots.txt file is a file based tool for controlling how search engines crawl and index your website. One of its key features is the ability to specify the location of your XML sitemap(s). Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it:
Create or Access Your robots.txt File: If you don’t already have a robots.txt file, you can create one in the root directory of your website.
Filtering sitemap pages and images Filtering is a powerful feature that allows you to precisely control which pages and images are excluded from your sitemap in our online and windows sitemap generator. This guide will walk you through the process of creating filtering rules using expressions, ranging from simple wildcard expressions to more advanced techniques. We follow the ANSI-92 standard for our filtering expressions.
Simple Wildcard Filters Wildcard expressions provide a flexible way to match URLs based on patterns.
FTP Uploading You can configure G-Mapper to FTP your sitemap to your website to simplify deployment.
Note that FTP details will be stored on your computer if you use these settings.
You’ll need to ensure your firewall/router is appropriately set up for the necessary FTP ports / traffic.
If you don’t want to use FTP, you can always export your sitemap and upload it using your preferred method.
Spidering your website Once you have configured your sitemap you need to spider it.
From the main toolbar select spider which will bring up the spider dialogue window.
Editing pages with G-Mapper G-Mapper allows you to edit your sitemap contents manually through the main screen. You will need to ensure you have spidered your website before it is populated
Any manual changes you make will be preserved even when you spider. If you remove your change, the default will be restored.
Your edits will be highlighted in blue.
Filenames Files are fixed and cannot be edited as they are discovered during the idexing process.
Publishing Your XML Sitemap and Notifying Search Engines It is assumed that you have generated your sitemap and uploaded to a suitable location on your website or blog (usually the root folder).
The next step is to ensure it is accessible and known to search engines.
Robots.txt It is important to include your sitemap in your robots.txt file as this will ensure it is organically doscoverable however it should be noted that this alone does not ensure your website and sitemap ges discovered.
XML Sitemaps Frequently Asked Questions What is an XML sitemap? An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages of your website, providing essential information to search engines like Google about the structure and content of your site. You can find more on the What is an XML sitemap page.
Why do I need an XML sitemap? An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and index your web pages more efficiently.
Editing images with G-Mapper G-Mapper allows you to edit your sitemap images manually through the main images screen.
For your images to be populated you need to have enabled images in the image settings
Once you have created a sitemap and indexed your files you should see all the contents of your sitemap listed on the main images screen.
Filenames Files are fixed and cannot be edited as they are discovered during the idexing process.
Exporting your sitemap When you Index your sitemap G-Mapper will automatically save your sitemap files to the root folder of your website. However if you want to export them to an alternate location you canuse the export function.
Note - If you make any updates in the editor, the version created on spidering in the default output location will be out of date so you will need to manually export.
Change Log Tuesday, 01 October 2023 G-Mapper is now end end of life. It will continue to be available and we will support people who contributed but the code will not be updated further. A replacement is planned for 2024. 3.2.0 New : Diagnostic tool. New : Context menu New : canonical urls ignored New : Robots meta and rel nofollow / no index ignored New : Spider User Agent Headers New : Increase max page size to 300Kb Fix : Gzip and deflate compression not working causing excessive bandwidth use.