Why I Built SiteMap
When I was freelancing and selling websites or SEO packages, I spent a lot of time with BuiltWith and love the tool.
Every time a client sent me a link, I’d run it through to see what stack it was built on – WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, maybe React. It gave me context before I ever opened a proposal.
BuiltWith is a great tool for looking up any websites tech stack. But I needed more. I had to check out the sites sitemap.xml file to see all paths & URLs. I had to look up their hosting details, run SEO tools to find internal / external links, I had to use separate tools to find Social Sharing previews and scripts and more. I wanted this all in one, easy to use place. Which is why I built SiteMap.
What it does
Sitemap scans whatever site you’re on and gives you a clean, organized snapshot of everything running behind it:
Technology Stack — Detects frameworks, CMS platforms, and libraries (WordPress, Shopify, React, Webflow, Tailwind, etc.)
Sitemap Explorer — Crawls internal links to visualize site structure
Cookies & Scripts — Lists analytics, ad trackers, and marketing pixels
Social Preview — Shows how your site appears when shared on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn
Hosting & DNS — Displays IP addresses, CNAME records, and provider data
Design Signals — Collects logos, favicons, and visual identifiers automatically
It’s all local – nothing is sent anywhere. You just click the extension, and it scans the current tab.
How It Works
The entire scan runs through a content script called detect.js — injected using the Chrome scripting API. It looks at a page’s HTML, meta tags, scripts, and links, then runs hundreds of small pattern detectors. It’s simple, and you may catch some bugs with V1. I originally was scanning my own site (built with WordPress) and getting React in the SiteMap tech stack, because my site mentioned React in a paragraph… But it will improve. Each technology has its own detection logic and uses the SimpleIcons API to automatically pull its logo and color.
Example:
const isWordPress = () => {
const metaSignal = metaKeyContains('generator', 'wordpress');
const pathSignals = [
/\/wp-content\//.test(html),
/\/wp-includes\//.test(html),
/\bwp-json\b/.test(html)
];
return metaSignal && pathSignals.length >= 1;
};
Categorizing Results
Detected items are grouped into sections like:
CMS & Commerce
Frontend Frameworks
UI Libraries
Analytics & Tracking
Marketing & Personalization
Each section is displayed in the popup’s main panel, with expandable items that show extra details and links to the official tech documentation.
Cookies and Scripts
For cookies, Sitemap reads the document.cookie string and matches each name against a dictionary of known patterns — _ga for Google Analytics, _fbp for Meta Pixel, _hj for Hotjar, and so on. Scripts are counted by host and displayed with their favicon using Google’s favicon API. It’s a small detail, but makes it easy to see what external services are connected to the page.
Example:
const COOKIE_DESCRIPTIONS = [
{ pattern: /^_ga/, description: 'Google Analytics visitor identifier' },
{ pattern: /^_fbp/, description: 'Meta Pixel advertising identifier' },
{ pattern: /^_hj/, description: 'Hotjar session analytics' }
];
Sitemap and Hosting Detection
For the sitemap explorer, the script parses <a> tags, groups internal vs external links, and limits to 20 nodes for quick display. For hosting and DNS, it uses basic fetch calls and chrome.dns lookups (where available) to resolve host records, IPs, and CNAMEs — enough to identify whether a site is using Cloudflare, Netlify, or another CDN.
Why I Built It
As mentioned, I just wanted something quick to use while browsing.
If I’m researching competitors, or curious how a site is put together, I don’t want to jump between tabs or paste URLs into a separate service.
Now, I just click the extension and get:
the tech stack
a mini sitemap
a quick look at analytics + cookies
and a social preview — all in one glance
And since everything runs locally, there’s no waiting, no data sharing, no tracking.
Thoughts
If you ever used BuiltWith or Wappalyzer, you’ll get the concept. Sitemap focuses more on the experience from a marketing, SEO and web development perspective.
You can install it soon from the Chrome Web Store – or keep an eye on duffisberg.com for updates.