Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Ror.xml vs sitemap.xml
-
Hey Mozzers,
So I've been reading somethings lately and some are saying that the top search engines do not use ror.xml sitemap but focus just on the sitemap.xml. Is that true?
Do you use ror? if so, for what purpose, products, "special articles", other uses? Can sitemap be sufficient for all of those?
Thank you,
Vadim
-
ok so yes its the standard, but does google look at ror? or other key niche news content aggregators? for which it might be important any thoughts?
-
Hi Vjay,
The sitemaps protocol was adopted as a standard by the three major search engines back in 2007.
This is not to say that other methods of submitting a sitemap don't work, but if you follow the sitemap protocol as described at sitemaps.org then you know that you are working within the standard recognized by Google, Bing & Yahoo.
Hope that helps,
Sha
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
-
Backlink quality vs quantity: Should I keep spammy backlinks?
Regarding backlinks, I'm wondering which is more advantageous for domain authority and Google reputation: Option 1: More backlinks including a lot of spammy links Option 2: Fewer backlinks but only reliable, non-spam links I've researched this topic around the web a bit and understand that the answer is somewhere in the middle, but given my site's specific backlink volume, the answer might lean one way or the other. For context, my site has a spam score of 2%, and when I did a quick backlink audit, roughly 20% are ones I want to disavow. However, I don't want to eliminate so many backlinks that my DA goes down. As always, we are working to build quality backlinks, but I'm interested in whether eliminating 20% of backlinks will hurt my DA. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | LianaLewis1 -
.xml sitemap showing in SERP
Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.
Technical SEO | | Kyleroe950 -
301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap
Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing. You could all but call it spam. www.site.com/page-1 www.site.com/page-2 www.site.com/page-3 www.site.com/page-4 www.site.com/page-5 www.site.com/page-6 Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is: www.site.com/not-spammy-page You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page. Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice. Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap? Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!
Technical SEO | | Emory_Peterson0 -
403s vs 404s
Hey all, Recently launched a new site on S3, and old pages that I haven't been able to redirect yet are showing up as 403s instead of 404s. Is a 403 worse than a 404? They're both just basically dead-ends, right? (I have read the status code guides, yes.)
Technical SEO | | danny.wood1 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Noindex vs. page removal - Panda recovery
I'm wondering whether there is a consensus within the SEO community as to whether noindexing pages vs. actually removing pages is different from Google Pandas perspective?Does noindexing pages have less value when removing poor quality content than physically removing ie. either 301ing or 404ing the page being removed and removing the links to it from the site? I presume that removing pages has a positive impact on the amount of link juice that gets to some of the remaining pages deeper into the site, but I also presume this doesn't have any direct impact on the Panda algorithm? Thanks very much in advance for your thoughts, and corrections on my assumptions 🙂
Technical SEO | | agencycentral0 -
Is there a suggested limit to the amount of links on a sitemap?
Currently, I have an error on my moz dashboard indicating there are too many links on one of my pages. That page is the sitemap. It was my understanding all internal pages should be linked to the sitemap. Can any mozzers help clarify the best practice here? Thanks, Clayton
Technical SEO | | JorgeUmana0 -
Value of an embedded site vs. a direct link?
We have a new site that is a great resource for a serious subject (suicide). I have been getting many requests from various communities and clinics about help on embedding our site in their websites. Although I certainly don't want to keep this resource from being used as much as possible, I am curious about the SEO costs/benefit to having someone embed our site on their own website rather than provide a link to our website directly from theirs.
Technical SEO | | ron_adease1