Sitemap - % of URL's in Google Index?
-
What is the average % of links from a sitemap that are included in the Google index? Obviously want to aim for 100% of the sitemap urls to be indexed, is this realistic?
-
If all the pages in your sitemap are worthy of the Google index, then you should expect around a 100% indexation rate. On the flip side, if you reference low quality pages in your sitemap file, you will not got them indexed and may even be hurting the trust of your sitemap file. As a point in case, Bing just recently announced that if they see an error rate greater than 1% in the sitemap, then they will just ignore your sitemap file.
-
Clients, so I have no idea how they do it. It's a complex automated process for sure.
-
Wow. Do you have a third party program to build your site map files or our you using something built in house?
-
Ryan's point is important to note. 100% is achievable under the correct circumstances. I've got a client with 34 million pages on their main site (and contained within a combined 909 sitemap xml files), and they have 34 million pages indexed.
-
The percent of pages indexed varies greatly with each site. If you desire 100% of your site indexed then 100% of your site's pages should be reviewed to ensure their content is worthy of being indexed. The content should be unique, well written and properly presented. Your sitemap process also needs to be carefully reviewed. Many site owners simply set up an automated process without taking the time to ensure it is properly configured. Often pages which are blocked by robots.txt are included in the site map, and those pages will not be indexed.
Many people say "I want 100% of my site indexed" just how many people say "I want to be #1 rank in Google". Both results are achievable, but both require time and effort, and perhaps money.
-
Hi. We have a stiemap with over 250,000 URLs and we are at 87%. This is a high for us. We have never been able to get 100%. We have been trying to clean up the sitemap a bit but with so many URLs it is hard to go through it line by line. We are making more of an effort to fix the errors Google tells us about in Webmaster Tools but these only account for a fraction of the URLs apparently not indexed.
We also do site searches on Google to see how many URLs total we have in Google as our sitemap only includes "the most important" pages. Doing a search for "site:www.sierratradingpost.com" comes up with over 400,000 URLs.
For us, I don't think 100% is realistic. We have never been able to achieve it. It will be interesting to see what other SEOmozers have to report!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can't support IE 7,8,9, 10\. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern browers while still providing a destination of IE browsers?
Hi, Our site can't support IE 7,8,9, 10. Can we redirect them to another page that's optimized for those browsers so that we can have our site work on modern broswers while still providing a destination of IE browsers? Would their be an SEO penalty? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dspete0 -
A client rebranded a few years ago and doesn't want to be associated with it's old brand name. He wishes not to appear when the old brand is searched in Google, is there something we can do?
The problem is there was redirection between the old branded site and the new one, and now when you type in the name of the old brand, the new one comes up. I have desperately tried to convince this client there is nothing we can do about it, dozens of news articles crop up with the two brands together as this was a hot topic a few years ago, but just in case I missed something I thought I'd ask the community of experts here on Moz. An example for this would be Tyco Healthcare that became covidien in 2007. When you type tyco healthcare, covidien crops up here and there. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
Client wants to remove mobile URLs from their sitemap to avoid indexing issues. However this will require SEVERAL billing hours. Is having both mobile/desktop URLs in a sitemap really that detrimental to search indexing?
We had an enterprise client ask to remove mobile URLs from their sitemaps. For their website both desktop & mobile URLs are combined into one sitemap. Their website has a mobile template (not a responsive website) and is configured properly via Google's "separate URL" guidelines. Our client is referencing a statement made from John Mueller that having both mobile & desktop sitemaps can be problematic for indexing. Here is the article https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-sitemaps-20137.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
We would be happy to remove the mobile URLs from their sitemap. However this will unfortunately take several billing hours for our development team to implement and QA. This will end up costing our client a great deal of money when the task is completed. Is it worth it to remove the mobile URLs from their main website to be in adherence to John Mueller's advice? We don't believe these extra mobile URLs are harming their search indexing. However we can't find any sources to explain otherwise. Any advice would be appreciated. Thx.0 -
Why isn't Google indexing this site?
Hello, Moz Community My client's site hasn't been indexed by Google, although it was launched a couple of months ago. I've ran down the check points in this article https://moz.com/ugc/8-reasons-why-your-site-might-not-get-indexed without finding a reason why. Any sharp SEO-eyes out there who can spot this quickly? The url is: http://www.oldermann.no/ Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
INEVO, digital agency0 -
Magento: Should we disable old URL's or delete the page altogether
Our developer tells us that we have a lot of 404 pages that are being included in our sitemap and the reason for this is because we have put 301 redirects on the old pages to new pages. We're using Magento and our current process is to simply disable, which then makes it a a 404. We then redirect this page using a 301 redirect to a new relevant page. The reason for redirecting these pages is because the old pages are still being indexed in Google. I understand 404 pages will eventually drop out of Google's index, but was wondering if we were somehow preventing them dropping out of the index by redirecting the URL's, causing the 404 pages to be added to the sitemap. My questions are: 1. Could we simply delete the entire unwanted page, so that it returns a 404 and drops out of Google's index altogether? 2. Because the 404 pages are in the sitemap, does this mean they will continue to be indexed by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Google Maps Integration Dynamic url
We are integrating Google Maps into a search feature on a website. Would you use the standard dynamic generated long url that appears after a search or find a way of reducing this to a shorter url. Taking into account hundreds of results. Question asked for seo purposes.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide0 -
Google Maps results doesn't show my site url but rather the maps url, why is this?
For several of my clients landing pages that show up in the Maps results the website url has been overwritten by the maps url (maps.google.com). Even though on my places page I have the correct website set up. Does anyone have any idea why they would be doing this and how I can correct it? Thanks kinldy in advance, Aaron. maps-url.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afranklin0