The pages makers build to be found: comparisons, alternatives, free tools and llms.txt, from over 4,000 sitemaps
A sitemap lists every page a site wants found, so it shows how a product goes after search and AI answers. We read the sitemaps of 5,761 products whose websites are still up: who writes, who compares, who gives away tools, and who still updates.
Share of 4,191 online products that publish a sitemap. A product can use several. Open a row for the products.
Most of what a product does to be found happens on its own website: the posts it writes, the pages that compare it with rivals, the free tools that bring in searches. A site lists those pages in its sitemap — a file at /sitemap.xml written for search engines — so the sitemap shows the plan without anyone having to describe it. We read the sitemaps of the 5,761 products we track whose websites are still up. 4,191 of them, 73%, publish one; the shares below are of those. Every share opens the list of products behind it, each with one of its pages to check.
Half write, over a quarter compare
A blog is still the most common thing to build: 56% have one, and the median blog lists 40 posts. Close behind is a file most sites didn't have two years ago, llms.txt (49%). Then come the pages written for people choosing between products — comparison pages (29%) and alternatives pages (27%) — and, far behind, free tools (6%).
Products that launched on Product Hunt use each one a little more than those that didn't: comparison pages 33% against 24%, llms.txt 51% against 44%.
Comparison and alternatives pages
These are pages for a searcher who has already found a competitor. A comparison page puts two things side by side — mostly the product and one rival (“Brevo vs Mailmodo”), sometimes two rivals, or two of the AI models a product serves — and an alternatives page answers “alternatives to X” with the product near the top. Once a product starts, it rarely stops at one: the median product with comparison pages has 8 of them, and the median with alternatives pages 8.
Mailmodo, an email marketing tool, keeps a section of 277 of them, one per competitor and pair of competitors (one of them ↗). Refgrow, a referral program tool, has 47 comparison pages and 23 alternatives pages (a comparison ↗, an alternatives page ↗).
Free tools: rare, and the most work
A free tool is a small working app on the product's site — a calculator, a generator, a checker — that people search for by what it does. It's the most work of the tactics here, and the rarest: 6% of sites. Those who build them build several; the median is 7 tool pages.
VEED, a video editor, is the far end: 1,249 pages under /tools, each one task — text to video, a script generator, an AI voice — with a box to drop a file into that opens the editor (one of them ↗). Mailmodo keeps 36, from an email template generator to a DMARC checker. Refgrow has 7, including test card numbers for each payment provider its customers use.
llms.txt is spreading fastest among new launches
llms.txt is a plain-text file at a site's root that tells AI assistants what the product is and where its documentation lives. It's a proposal rather than a standard, and no search engine promises to read it — yet newer products adopt it more: 59% of 2026 launches with a sitemap have one, against 49% of 2025 launches and 36% of 2024's.
Of online products that launched on Product Hunt and publish a sitemap; years with at least 100 launches.
Older years aren't a clean trend: a product launched years ago and still online is more often an established company, and those add llms.txt to their docs too.
Top launches build more pages for people comparing
Products that finished in the top 5 on their Product Hunt launch day keep alternatives pages more often: 35%, against 23% of those placed 6th to 20th and 17% of those placed lower. Comparison pages lean the same way, less sharply: 37% of the top 5, against 28% and 28%.
Of 2,500 ranked Product Hunt launches whose sites are online and publish a sitemap.
That doesn't mean the pages won the launch. A team that places in the top 5 is often a bigger or more practised one, and the same team is more likely to work on search. Read it as what the products that launch well also do.
Is anyone still updating the site?
Sitemaps can carry the date each page last changed. 2,135 of them carry dates that mean something — spread over two months or more, not one build date stamped on every page. Most of those sites changed a page this month or last, but 20% last did two months ago or earlier, and 6% not in over half a year. A site can be online and still be finished with.
Of 2,135 sitemaps whose dates span two months or more; a sitemap stamped only with its build date says nothing about its pages.
What to take from it
- Write where people compare. If searchers already know your competitors, one honest page per competitor answers the search that's closest to a decision. 29% of products do it, with a median of 8 pages.
- A free tool is a product in miniature. It's the rarest tactic because it's the most work. If you build one, build the thing your product does, small enough to use without signing up.
- llms.txt is cheap. One text file listing what you are and where your docs are; 59% of 2026's launches have one.
- Keep the sitemap honest. Real dates on changed pages tell search engines what to re-read; a build date on every page tells them nothing.
How we counted
For each product whose website answered our last check, we read the sitemaps its robots.txt lists (else /sitemap.xml), following sitemap indexes up to 20 files and 60,000 pages; gzipped sitemaps aren't read. Pages count when they're on the product's own domain, with language prefixes removed. A blog is a section named blog, posts, articles, news, insights or journal. Comparison pages are a section of them (/vs, /compare, /comparisons) or at least two “x-vs-y” pages with the product's own name on one side; alternatives pages are at least two pages with “alternative” in their path; we checked 30 products of each by hand, and 28 and 27 were right. Free tools are a section named like tools whose page, fetched, has a field to type into or a file to upload — every one we checked was a working tool, but tools drawn only in the browser are missed, so that share is a floor. Thousands of pages made from keyword templates are another common tactic, left out here: from paths alone they can't be told from podcast episodes, shop catalogues and press releases. A sitemap shows which pages a site lists, not which ones bring visitors. Counted on 2026-10-13.