Sitemap Folders on Search Results
-
Hello!
We are managing SEO campaign of a video website. We have an issue about sitemap folders.
I have sitemaps like ** /xml/sitemap-name.xml .** But Google is indexing my /xml/ folder and also sitemaps and they appear in search results.
If i will add Disallow: /xml/ to my robots.txt and remove /xml/ folder from webmaster tools, Google could see my sitemaps? or it ignores them?
Will my site effect negatively after remove /xml/ folder completely from search results?
What should i do?
-
Hi Ahmet
I don't think the sitemap indexed is an issue. Also I wouldn't block it with robots.txt - cause they won't be able to crawl it!
-Dan
-
Hi Ahmet,
You could give it at try by add the lines to your robots.txt for a second and testing your sitemap from within Google Webmaster Tools to see if it's working. I can't give you a definitive answer on this one. In the cases I handled I just accepted that these sitemaps were ranking for some long long long tail queries.
-
Hi Martijn,
I wonder if i block my sitemaps from robots.txt, could google bot reach my sitemaps?
-
Hi Ahmet,
I've seen this a dozen times, somehow Google thinks site maps are in some way great content as they are putting them within the search results. But by using the Disallow in your robots.txt Google won't be able to find your sitemap, or at least they will provide you with an error because you excluded them.
Hope this helps!
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
-
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 -
Best Sitemap for Large Website
i have more than 3500 pages on my website. Please let me know the best sitemap plugin for my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard1 -
Sitemap Priority and Recency
Perhaps more of a discussion here than a definite answer, but we are looking at making periodic changes to the priority and recency of our sitemap pages, but would have to repopulate that information each time our plugin updates for our WordPress site. Is this something that is even worth doing or are these updates not impactful enough to merit adding it to our process? Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReunionMarketing0 -
Max Amout Of HTML Pages In A Folder
What's the maximum amount of html pages that one should put in a folder, to get the best SEO GoggleBot crawl? I'm aware that there's a limit of 10,000 on most servers, but was curious to know if a lesser amount of pages would be better, for crawling and indexing purposes. Also curious on peoples opinions on whether .jpg and .gif files should follow similiar rules.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Sitemaps
I am working with a site that has sitemaps broken down very specifically. By page type: article, page etc and also broken down by Category. Unfortunately, this is not done hierarchically. Category and page type are separate maps, they are not nested. My question here is: Is is detrimental to have two separate sitemaps that point to the same pages? Should we eliminate one of these taxonomies, or maybe just try to make them hierarchical? IE item type -> category -> pagetitle Is there an issue with having a sitemap index that points to a nested sitemap index? (I dont think so, but might as well be sure. Thanks Moz Community! Can't delete my question, but turns out that isn't how they are structured. Food for thought anyway I suppose.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Do search results differ greatly when you search on mobile?
If you have a site with responsive design, is Google likely to look upon you more favourably and dramatically change rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
How to enable crawling for dynamic generated search result pages?
I want to enable crawling facility for dynamic generated search result pages which are generating by Magento Solr search. You can view more about it by following URLs. http://code.google.com/p/magento-solr/ http://www.vistastores.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=bamboo+table+lamp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
http://www.vistastores.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=ceramic+table+lamp
http://www.vistastores.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=green+patio+umbrella Right now, Google is not crawling search result page because, I have added following syntax to Robots.txt file. Disallow: /*?q= So, How do I enable crawling of search result pages with best SEO practice? If any other inputs in same direction so, it will help me more to get it done.0
