A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users.
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The Sitemap Paradox
We use a sitemap on Stack Overflow, but I have mixed feelings about it.
Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow ...
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4answers
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Are there any clear indicators that my sitemap file is beneficial?
I have recently created a sitemap.xml file and uploaded it to my Google Webmasters Tools account. Google didn't report any issues or errors with the uploaded sitemap of my site.
Now my question is:
...
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6answers
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Why did Google stop indexing pages from our sitemap.xml?
We're seeing some pages that exist in our sitemap.xml but are inexplicably missing from Google's public search index.
You can't download http://superuser.com/sitemap.xml -- we protect this file ...
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4answers
332 views
easy tool for creating XML sitemaps? (constantly expanding site)
Does anyone recommend either
a php script that I can run as a CRON
or
somekind of thirdparty tool i can use
to create sitemaps?
My website is events bases and so the pages are pretty ...
12
votes
1answer
1k views
Should I include everything in the sitemap or only new content?
For a website with dynamic content (new content is constantly being added), should I only include the newest content in the sitemap or should I include everything (with a sitemap index)? What are the ...
11
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5answers
537 views
Is it necessary/useful to build a sitemap for a small website?
I've created several small scale websites, usually for small businesses. They usually contain some information about the company, a contact form, and sometimes a few dynamic parts : news, pictures, ...
11
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1answer
369 views
Proper sitemap.xml setup
I have a dynamic site which has many (well, less than 50) users. Each user is allowed to create as many pages as they want. I know that there is a limit to how many pages you can be listed in ...
11
votes
3answers
2k views
How to create a good sitemap for dynamic website
I have a website with dynamic content and different kind of pages. I have some pages that rarely change, and I have pages like blogs that change often. The blog pages also have links for sorting, for ...
9
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1answer
238 views
using multiple sitemaps in a domain
I have a domain http://sub.example.com/.
In it there is a wordpress blog at http://sub.example.com/blog and other more static content at http://sub.example.com/other, http://sub.example.com/stuff, ...
8
votes
2answers
501 views
Have search engines recognise multi-lingual sites
I have organised my site by language using the following structure:
www.domain.com #spanish language version homepage
www.domain.com/en #english language version homepage
The site is of Spanish ...
7
votes
4answers
435 views
Is it possible to 'trigger' indexing on a site?
We're launching a redeveloped site soon. Google has already indexed the site that we're going to replace, but the links that google indexed are no longer applicable, because the new site has a totally ...
7
votes
2answers
338 views
Dynamic sitemap file
Does it matter if I serve sitemap.xml as a dynamic page? e.g., use .htaccess to rewrite sitemap.xml (or whatever static URL I submitted at the Webmaster Tools) to a PHP file. The PHP file will call ...
7
votes
4answers
1k views
& in sitemap links, are they correct?
Simple question, I'm asking just to make sure.
A Google sitemap generator generated a sitemap.txt fle with links written like this:
http://www.domain.com/category.htm?name=some-name&cat_id=8
...
7
votes
2answers
1k views
Ask.com Sitemap Crawler Down (for good)?
I have been using Ask.com as one of the search engines to ping my sitemap. When I went to ping my sitemap today to have my sitemap re-indexed, the website (http://submissions.ask.com/ping) says it no ...
7
votes
2answers
112 views
Can a sitemap change result in a drop of visits?
I recently restructured and resubmitted the sitemap for a website of mine in GWT. The old one was built by a script I acquired, which had its flaws but dit the job. After having implemented URL ...
7
votes
1answer
123 views
Should the urls in the sitemap contain the slug?
I'm coding the sitemap logic of my side-project blogging platform and I would like to know if omitting the slug in the <loc> nodes of the sitemap could be a problem for the crawlers.
Having two ...
7
votes
6answers
137 views
In regards to seo, is a site map important for a small 3 page website?
In regards to seo, is a site map important for a small 3 page website? I understand that it is not needed for the convenience of a user visiting the site, but will it help the search engines find it?
7
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1answer
79 views
Solution for large scale site maps
I'm working on a nationwide retail web site with thousands of categories and product pages and my client wants to move from a single sitemap to multiple sitemaps based on page categorization. Here is ...
6
votes
1answer
243 views
Google anonymous sitemap submission
By searching for "How to submit a sitemap to Google" you can find dozens of links, and all of'em truly explain the how to very well.
But all of'em start with this first step:
Login to your Google ...
6
votes
4answers
169 views
Sitemaps HTML and others
I am looking for the best resources on how to build sitemaps.
I am currently aware of the obvious HTML sitemaps and the (google) sitemap.xml and (yahoo) urllist.txt
Anyone know of resources for ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
Does sitemap.xml have to be in the root directory?
This may be a simple and absurd question, but is it completely necessary for sitemap.xml file to be in the root directory of the wordpress install directory of the site, or is it ok to create a ...
6
votes
1answer
79 views
Does Google reprocesses submitted sitemaps from time to time?
Assuming one submits a sitemap for a website in Google Webmaster, does Google reprocess it from time to time? If yes, at which rate?
6
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1answer
94 views
How to tell which URLs have fallen out of search engine index
I've had a few pages trimmed from google's indexed number on my sitemap in webmaster tools. How can I tell which pages have been dropped?
5
votes
6answers
776 views
Is SEO and sitemap really important?
Is the sitemap really important? I ask this because I couldn't see the sitemaps of big websites such as Twitter, Facebook and others... The sitemap should be at "/sitemap.xml", "/sitemap.xml.gz" or ...
5
votes
6answers
312 views
Looking for a sitemap generator
I am looking for a good way to generate a sitemap for my current site. I inherited a huge site at work and we are going to start the process of IA analysis and redesign. It would be awesome if there ...
5
votes
2answers
626 views
Does sitemap.xml contain links to the entire site?
I read up on the limitations and how you can link multiple sitemaps. But my question is, are they to contain links to EVERYTHING or just the most recent X thousand changes?
5
votes
1answer
361 views
Do I reference all my *.xml.gz sitemap files in robots.txt
I have a website with over 1 million url's. As such, I have 1 sitemap.xml file which acts as an index to many sitemap0000.xml.gz, sitemap0001.xml.gz ... sitemap0030.xml.gz etc. files.
My question is: ...
5
votes
1answer
231 views
RSS vs Sitemap for SEO
What are the differences of the two and how can they help in SEO? I'm creating a custom-scripted CMS and I'm thinking if should I either add RSS/Sitemap/Both?
5
votes
1answer
2k views
Will an incorrect change frequency in my XML sitemap harm my website?
What happens if I set the change frequency of a page to daily and don't update it daily? Will this make search engine blacklist my site? What is the accepted changefreq to balance search indexing ?
5
votes
1answer
435 views
Sitemap XML version vs simple text (urls list) version, do you know what are the pros?
I usualy submit simple text urls list as sitemap on Google webmaster tools. It's just a matter of simplicity, a simple text file is lightweight, easier to read also for humans (actually for me). :)
...
5
votes
1answer
450 views
SEO: Make hashtag links look static
So I have a website which displays all my content vertically. (like modern websites often do these days). Thus I can't create static links to each section. I'm currently handling the scrolling with ...
5
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1answer
185 views
Are there specific advantages or disadvantages of an XML sitemap over a TXT based sitemap?
Are there any specific advantages or disadvantages in generating an XML based sitemap in place of a simple txt based sitemap (list of URLs)?
I realize that in the XML format I can set priority and ...
5
votes
1answer
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In Google Webmaster Tools we have 3 sitemaps attributed to 1 domain
I have a website that has been on the internet for almost 10 years created in "Microsoft FrontPage" with over 900 pages. Currently in Google Webmaster tools it shows up as 2 domains and 3 sitemaps:
...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
How long does Bingbot typically take to process a sitemap submission?
I submitted a domain's sitemap.xml to Bingbot (in Webmaster Tools).
It's been a couple of days but the status is still pending. Does anyone know how much time does Bing Webmaster Tools takes to ...
5
votes
1answer
91 views
How to create google video sitemap urls for very large video files with distinct segments?
I have a large video files about 1 hr in duration, with different sections of the video corresponding to different distinct sub topics . For example, the whole video may be about an yoga exercise ...
4
votes
3answers
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How long does it take for Google Webmasters to index site after submitting sitemap? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why isn't my website in Google search results?
I have submitted my website today into Google search using Google Webmasters using sitemaps.
The status on the ...
4
votes
4answers
758 views
Are HTML sitemaps important from a SEO perspective?
Are HTML sitemaps (like this one http://www.google.com/sitemap.html) important from a SEO perspective, or is uploading an XML to Google enough?
Beside from visualizing a data structure for the user, ...
4
votes
3answers
511 views
Sitemap: Hierarchical layout possible?
Is it possible to design my sitemap hierarchically?
My site is laid out hierarchically into
World=>Continent=>Country=>State=>City=>Articles
Can I design my sitemap xml like ...
4
votes
3answers
727 views
Sitemap to display hash tag links or not?
I am just creating sitemap for my site and wanted to find out if I should include # links for SEO?
For Example:
www.mydomain.com/#comment1
www.mydomain.com/#comment2
Does this help with SEO or ...
4
votes
3answers
128 views
My archives are beating my current content, how do I stop from competing against myself?
I've inherited a site with about 15,000 pages going back 16 years. Often current events are outranked by previous events. What are the best techniques to make sure that I'm not fighting against ...
4
votes
1answer
105 views
sitemap.xml : shall I put all my URLs including the ones that have “empty result” for a dataset?
Here's my problem: on my website, you can click on all the regions, and the new web page is the result of the search of the region. Thus the result may be empty.
Shall I include all those "empty ...
4
votes
1answer
263 views
Unsupported file format of sitemap - Google
I'm having an issue where I'm submitting my sitemap, too bad I keep this omitted error:
Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it ...
4
votes
2answers
1k views
Google doesn't seem to update the description or title of my homepage
Before we launched our website, we had set up a "coming soon" page and google picked up the title and description from its contents. So the description in the search results said, "Coming soon! Visit ...
4
votes
2answers
147 views
Looking for ideas for a site map page on the website
We have a site with a lot of pages. We are in some of the final stages of redesigning the site and am looking for some examples of good site map designs we can be inspired by.
Have you seen any good ...
4
votes
1answer
281 views
Can I host a sitemap on another domain?
Just out of curiosity, I have developed a small app analyzing and generating sitemaps for a given domain.
Can I tell search engines to look for the sitemap of a given domain on my app using a ...
4
votes
1answer
155 views
Sitemap with pages missing better than no sitemap at all?
I've inherited a site built with a CMS I'm not familiar with. I've created new pages for the site and I can see they do appear in a html sitemap, but not the xml sitemap.
Assuming I can't add the ...
4
votes
1answer
70 views
Webmaster tools show old URLs are crawled
We renewed our website last year (2012) in December. After that we have put 301 redirection in place for the required pages. We removed some pages in old site when we moved to new site.
For example ...
4
votes
1answer
140 views
MediaWiki sitemap generator
I'm using mediawiki for my site. I'm trying several ways to generate sitemap but it doesn't work. Anyone knows how to generate sitemap for MediaWiki and alert to Google automatically?
4
votes
1answer
224 views
Do I need to periodically re-submit my sitemaps to yahoo/bing?
I know Google's webmasters downloads a new version of my sitemaps every day. I am not sure if the yahoo / bing systems do the same thing. Google's says "Downloaded" and for the sitemaps that add the ...
4
votes
2answers
105 views
Can a sitemap index file reference sitemap files under different domains?
My company owns several domain names. We also host websites for our users at their custom domains.
Our domains:
company.com
product1.com
product2.com
Users's domains:
user1.com
user2.com
...
