How To Find Your RSS Feed and Sitemap URL

If you have ever tried to subscribe to a blog through an RSS reader or needed to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console, you know the frustration. Where is this URL hiding? Why do different platforms put it in different places? And why does nobody just tell you the pattern?

I run into this constantly when setting up content monitoring for clients at MuseMouth. Whether I need to track competitor blogs, set up automated content workflows, or submit sitemaps for SEO purposes, knowing how to quickly find these URLs saves hours of wasted time.

This guide covers the exact URL patterns for every major platform. Plus I will show you my go to method that works on literally any website.

Quick Reference Cheat Sheet

If you just need the URL patterns, here is everything in one place for quick copy pasting:

Keep reading for the universal inspect element method that works on any site, plus platform specific details.

Why Should You Care About RSS Feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It lets you subscribe to content updates without giving away your email address or dealing with algorithm driven feeds. When a site publishes something new, it shows up in your RSS reader chronologically. No ads. No manipulation. Just the content you asked for.

Beyond personal use, RSS feeds are CRITICAL for business applications. I use them to trigger automations in Zapier and Make.com, monitor competitor content, aggregate industry news for clients, and feed content into AI analysis pipelines. If you are building any kind of automated content workflow, understanding RSS feeds is foundational.

Sitemaps serve a different purpose entirely. They are XML files that list all the important URLs on your website so search engines can crawl and index them efficiently. Google uses your sitemap to understand your site structure. If you are serious about SEO, you need to know where your sitemap lives and make sure it is properly submitted to Google Search Console.

The Universal Method: Inspect Element

Before I dump platform specific URLs on you, let me share the technique that works everywhere. This is my go to method when I encounter an unfamiliar platform or a heavily customized site.

Navigate to the blog or content page of the website you want to find the RSS feed for. Right click anywhere on the page and select "View Page Source" or hit Ctrl+U on Windows (Cmd+Option+U on Mac). This opens the raw HTML code that makes up the page.

Now hit Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F) to open the find dialog. Search for "rss" and look for a line that looks something like this:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
      href="https://example.com/feed/" />

The URL inside the href attribute is your RSS feed. Copy it and paste it into your RSS reader or automation tool.

If searching for "rss" does not work, try searching for "feed" or "atom" or ".xml" to catch alternative feed formats. Some sites use Atom feeds instead of RSS, but they work the same way for practical purposes.

This method works because websites that offer RSS feeds are supposed to declare them in the HTML head section using a link tag. Most RSS readers use this same technique to auto discover feeds when you paste in a website URL.

WordPress RSS Feeds and Sitemaps

WordPress powers something like 40% of all websites on the internet, so let us start here. The good news is WordPress RSS feeds follow a dead simple pattern.

For the main blog feed, just add /feed/ to the end of the website URL:

https://example.com/feed/

That is it. Works on virtually every WordPress site whether self hosted or on WordPress.com. But WordPress also generates specialized feeds you might find useful:

• Category feed: example.com/category/categoryname/feed/
• Tag feed: example.com/tag/tagname/feed/
• Author feed: example.com/author/authorname/feed/
• Comments feed: example.com/comments/feed/

For sitemaps, WordPress does not generate them by default in the core software. Most sites use SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math to create sitemaps. The standard location is:

https://example.com/sitemap.xml

If that does not work, try /sitemap_index.xml or /wp-sitemap.xml since different plugins use different naming conventions.

Shopify RSS Feeds and Sitemaps

Shopify blogs have a simple feed pattern that uses the Atom format. Just append .atom to the end of your blog URL:

https://yourstore.com/blogs/news.atom

Replace "news" with whatever your blog handle is. If you have multiple blogs on your Shopify store, each one gets its own feed at /blogs/bloghandle.atom. Works the same as RSS for practical purposes.

For sitemaps, every Shopify store automatically gets one at:

https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml

Shopify creates multiple child sitemaps organized by content type. You will see separate files for products, collections, blog posts, and pages. These are named things like sitemap_products_1.xml and sitemap_collections_1.xml.

Squarespace RSS Feeds and Sitemaps

Squarespace uses a query parameter approach for RSS feeds rather than a URL path. To get the RSS feed for any blog, events, or store page, append ?format=rss to the page URL:

https://yoursite.com/blog?format=rss

You need to know the page slug for this to work. Navigate to Pages in Squarespace, hover over the page name, click the settings icon, and look for the URL Slug field.

Want to filter by category or tag? Add those as additional parameters:

• Category filter: ?category=CategoryName&format=rss
• Tag filter: ?tag=TagName&format=rss

If your category name has spaces, replace them with %20 in the URL.

Squarespace sitemaps live at the standard location: yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Wix RSS Feeds and Sitemaps

Wix keeps things simple. If your Wix site has a blog, the RSS feed URL is:

https://yoursite.com/blog-feed.xml

This pattern works consistently across Wix sites with blog functionality. If there is no blog on the site, this URL will return nothing useful.

Sitemaps follow the standard convention at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. Wix automatically submits sitemaps to Google for premium sites with custom domains during the SEO setup process.

Other Popular Platforms

Webflow

Webflow requires you to manually enable RSS 2.0 feeds in your collection settings first. Once enabled, the feed URL follows this pattern:

https://yoursite.com/collectionname/rss

Ghost

Ghost makes RSS super accessible. The main feed is at yoursite.com/rss/ and you can get author or tag specific feeds at yoursite.com/author/authorname/rss/ or yoursite.com/tag/tagname/rss/.

Blogger

Blogger feeds use this pattern:

https://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Medium

Medium puts the feed prefix before the username, which trips people up. For a user profile:

https://medium.com/feed/@username

For a publication: medium.com/feed/publicationname

Substack

Every Substack newsletter has a feed at:

https://newsletter.substack.com/feed

Tumblr

Tumblr blogs have RSS at yourblog.tumblr.com/rss

YouTube

YouTube channel feeds require the channel ID (not the handle). The format is:

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNELID

To find the channel ID, view the page source and search for "channel_id=" to locate the numeric identifier.

The Universal Sitemap Location

Here is the thing about sitemaps. Almost EVERY platform puts them in the same place:

https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

This works for WordPress, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, Ghost, and most other modern platforms. Try this URL first and you will be right 90% of the time. If it does not work, check the site's robots.txt file at yoursite.com/robots.txt since it often lists the sitemap location.

Browser Extensions and Tools

If you do this frequently, browser extensions can save time. Feedbro for Chrome auto detects RSS feeds on any page and displays an icon in the toolbar. The RSS Subscription Extension from Google does something similar. Both let you preview feeds before subscribing.

For sites that do not natively support RSS, services like RSS.app and FetchRSS can generate custom feeds from any webpage. You point them at a URL, specify which content blocks to include, and they create a hosted feed you can use anywhere.

I covered similar automation concepts in my article on automating lead generation without enterprise software if you want to see how these feeds fit into larger workflow systems.

Why This Matters for SEO and Automation

Understanding RSS feeds and sitemaps is not just nerdy technical knowledge. It directly impacts your business operations and search visibility.

For SEO, your sitemap tells Google what pages exist and when they were last updated. If your sitemap is missing or broken, search engines might miss important content. I have seen sites recover significant organic traffic simply by fixing sitemap issues and resubmitting to Search Console. Similar to the kind of optimization work I discussed in my SEO content automation case study.

For automation, RSS feeds are the backbone of content monitoring workflows. Want to know when a competitor publishes something new? Set up an RSS trigger. Need to automatically share your latest blog posts to social media? RSS feed to automation platform to social accounts. Building a curated newsletter from multiple sources? Aggregate RSS feeds.

If you are struggling to connect these pieces into a working system, that is exactly the kind of workflow optimization I help clients with. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes to map out the right approach.

Final Thoughts

RSS feeds and sitemaps are foundational web technologies that have been around for decades. But knowing how to quickly find them saves real time when you are building automations, monitoring content, or optimizing for search engines.

The inspect element method is your fallback for any unfamilar situation. The platform specific URLs handle 90% of cases. And if a site truly does not offer RSS, third party generators fill the gap.

Now go subscribe to some feeds. Your inbox will thank you.