A: Hi Toni for your question and concern:

Great question — and you’re absolutely right to call this out. What you’re describing is a real and intentional pattern in many modern CMSs: flat, clean URLs that don’t mirror how users actually navigate the site.

Here’s how we think about it, and how VisualSitemaps handles it today 👇

1. URL structure ≠ navigational IA (by design)

VisualSitemaps is very explicit about this distinction.

In many modern setups (WordPress, headless CMSs, JS-driven menus), URLs are intentionally flat:

/article-title

…but users reach those pages via:

/blog → /category → /article

So when pages appear as siblings of /about, that’s not a bug — it’s the literal URL topology. And you’re correct: URL accuracy alone can be misleading for IA.

That’s why VisualSitemaps separates how URLs exist from how information architecture is modeled.

The TWO structural logics we support today:

VisualSitemaps lets you view and organize a site using two complementary structural models:

## Directory-based structure
Groups pages strictly by URL paths. Technically accurate, but limited for flat-URL sites.

## Referral-based structure
Groups pages based on how they are linked and reached (navigation, contextual links). This is usually the correct starting point for flat URLs.

Docs:
https://support.visualsitemaps.com/en/articles/2117891-what-is-your-site-mapping-structure-based-on

## How flat-URL sites are handled in practice (manual IA workflows)

Because there is no standard way menus are coded, no crawler can reliably infer “menu intent” automatically ( but perhaps AI will solve this for us soon! ).

For flat-URL sites, IA is something you shape intentionally.

Today, we support this via THREE fast manual workflows:

✅ Workflow 1 – Build the nav skeleton, then batch-move pages into it
Create your main sections (Blog, Projects, Recipes, etc.), then use batch select + move to group hundreds of flat URLs in seconds.

>> Guide: https://support.visualsitemaps.com/en/articles/2117895-how-to-batch-move-delete-pages

✅ Workflow 2 – Build section maps, then connect them into one Master IA
Create separate maps per major section, refine each independently, then link them into a single coherent architecture.

>> Guide: https://support.visualsitemaps.com/en/articles/2117898-how-to-connect-one-sitemap-to-another-sitemap

✅ Workflow 3 – Build a Master IA maps, then import separate directories/pages from other maps, refine each independently via drag n drop.

>> Guide:
https://support.visualsitemaps.com/en/articles/13295354-how-to-import-pages-from-another-crawl

These workflows are specifically designed for large flat-URL sites where URL paths don’t express structure.

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## AI Optimization: generating the intended architecture

On top of that, we also offer AI Optimization for teams who want a future-state IA proposal.

Instead of documenting what exists, the AI analyzes internal links, content semantics, and topical relationships to generate a newly proposed sitemap — complete with logical groupings, priorities, and a cleaner structure that reflects how the site should be organized for users and search engines.

This is intentionally prescriptive, not just descriptive — and it’s especially powerful for flat-URL CMS setups.

--- > Bottom line

You’re right: flat URLs are modern, intentional, and common.
And you’re also right that URL siblings ≠ user mental models.

That’s why VisualSitemaps supports:

✅ Multiple structural views (current state)

✅Fast manual IA shaping workflows (practical control)

✅ AI-generated optimized maps (future state)

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re: broken screenshots
Unfortunately - this has to do with the loading logic of THAT site exclusively.
one solution we have to mitigate this is using the Screenshot-Delay option ( set to 10 )
please give that a try.

thanks again for you question!