Map a competitor's content footprint from its sitemap with ChatGPT, and why that is not a strategy
A tested version of a viral trick: group a competitor's sitemap URLs by path, ask ChatGPT for a roadmap, and see what it can and cannot tell you. The author rates it 3 out of 10.
Evidence: The source shows its work: steps, screenshots, code or data you can inspect.
The business problem
A founder wants to learn how a competitor approaches SEO without paying for rank-tracking tools.
What was tried
The author found the competitor's sitemap through robots.txt, collected 4,946 URLs, grouped them by top-level path and fed the grouped data to ChatGPT to produce a six-month roadmap. The grouping showed that 70% of URLs were templated comparison pages and 23% were cost pages, with only 117 blog posts. No traffic, ranking or keyword data was used.
What was reported (mixed)
The sitemap analysis usefully revealed the site's structure and how much of it was programmatic, but the AI roadmap was based only on URL names and the author judged it misleading. A sitemap shows what was published, not what performs.
Limitations
One competitor and one run, with no replication. No traffic or ranking data was collected, so claims about what works for the competitor are inferred. The prompt, the model version and the full roadmap are not shown, and the claim that Google demotes thin programmatic pages is not cited. The page does not show a year.
What you need
A competitor's public sitemap and a ChatGPT account. A rank-tracking tool is recommended for real strategy.
Sources
- DEV Community (Ravi Patel) ↗ Firsthand write-up, publication date unknown
Source published: unknown. Last reviewed here: October 11, 2026. Spot a mistake? Tell us.
Tools in this workflow
- ChatGPT: Drafted a roadmap from the grouped URLsTry ChatGPT
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