Sitemap Manager

GrowDeck keeps your sitemap.xml and robots.txt in sync automatically.

Last updated: May 2025

Overview

After every page deployment, GrowDeck updates your sitemap.xml and robots.txt. Pro sites with Google Search Console connected can also save versioned sitemap snapshots and roll back from the site’s Sitemap tab.

Sitemap.xml

GrowDeck maintains a sitemap.xml that includes:

All crawled pages (from the last crawl)
All deployed GrowDeck-generated pages
Correct lastmod dates
Priority and changefreq hints

Accessing your sitemap

Your generated sitemap is available at:

GET /api/v1/sites/:siteId/sitemap.xml

It’s served as valid XML and can be submitted to Google Search Console.

Submit to Google Search Console

After your first deploy, submit the sitemap URL to Google Search Console to accelerate indexing of your new pages.

robots.txt

GrowDeck generates a robots.txt that:

Allows all standard search engine bots
Explicitly allows AI crawlers: GPTBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), PerplexityBot (Perplexity)
Points to your sitemap.xml

Why allow AI crawlers?

AI-powered search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) crawl the web to build their knowledge bases. Pages that explicitly allow these bots get indexed and can appear as citations in AI search results. Most sites accidentally block them.

Why this matters

As of 2025, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude collectively handle hundreds of millions of queries per day. Sites that allow these crawlers can appear as citations in AI-generated answers — a new acquisition channel most sites are missing.

Accessing your robots.txt

GET /api/v1/sites/:siteId/robots.txt

Version history

Pro sites can enable automated sitemap updates once Google Search Console is connected. Each deploy saves a snapshot, and any previous version can be restored from /sites/:siteId/sitemap.

Notifications

When GrowDeck updates your sitemap or robots.txt, a notification appears in the dashboard bell icon. Notifications remind you to submit the updated sitemap to Google Search Console.

Manual management

From the Sitemap tab in your site workspace, you can:

View all sitemap entries
See which pages were added by GrowDeck vs already existed
Download the generated sitemap.xml
Copy the robots.txt content

Approval WorkflowSee how reviewed pages move into deployment.

GEO EngineLearn why AI crawler access matters for citations.

IntegrationsConnect analytics and alerts around every deployment.