Multiple Sitemaps
-
Hello everyone!
I am in the process of updating the sitemap of an ecommerce website and I was thinking to upload three different sitemaps for different part (general/categories and subcategories/productgroups and products) of the site in order to keep them easy to update in the future.
Am I allowed to do so? would that be a good idea?
Open to suggestion
-
Right! I think now I have the complete picture and I can crack on working on it!
Thank you very much indeed!
Best Regards
Oscar
-
If you are talking about the sitemap for the visitors on your website, if you think the newly added pages are going to be helpful to them, you can update your visitors sitemap accordingly. But the Sitemap.xml file is a supplemental indexing tool meant for the search engines to find the pages on your website easily and needs to be updated and resubmitted to search engines using webmaster tools accounts whenever new pages are added to your website.
Hope that helps.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
Thanks a lot guys!
I really appreciated your help, although all this information made me realize I have tons of work to do to update the sitemaps and I have to start creating new ones.
Just another question, after I create the new sitemaps I will also have to update the sitemap on the website, is that right?
-
it should be added to the end of your robots.txt and be proceeded by 'Sitemap', like:
Sitemap: http://www.exmaple.com/sitemap1.xml
Sitemap: http://www.exmaple.com/sitemap2.xml -
No problem my friend. You are most welcome. Yes, you just need to give the location of your sitemap.xml file as given below:
Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap_location.xml Here you go for more: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669?hl=en
-
Oh I see, thank you very much for your help, I haven't got much experience dealing with sitemaps.
So in order to put them in the robots.txt I will just have to put the link in it without anything else, is that right?
-
Hi there, robots.txt file is one of the initial things that search engine spiders look at when they visit your website and a reference to the Sitemap.xml file in there will aid the search engine spider to quickly access to important URLs on your website then and there.
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
Why should I put the sitemaps in the robots.txt?
I ve been looking around and some sites do and some don't, what's the reason for it?
-
Thanks for the response my friend. The problem without an index sitemap file is, when you have to resubmit multiple sitemap.xml files in webmaster tools account, you will have to resubmit each of them at a time. With an index sitemap file, you just need to submit the index file and it would take care of the job.
Here you go for more: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/71453?hl=en
Best,
Devanur Rafi
-
You don't actually need to use a sitemap index file to use multiple sitemaps. You can list and submit them separately in robots.txt file and Google Web Master Tools.
-
Yes this is fine, from Google:
Whether you list all URLs in a single Sitemap or in multiple Sitemaps (in the same directory of different directories) is simply based on what's easiest for you to maintain. We treat the URLs equally for each of these methods of organization. More info can be found here multiple sitemaps in same directory
-
Hi there, though a single Sitemap.xml file can accommodate upto 50K URLs, it is not uncommon to go for multiple Sitemap.xml files for many purposes even with few hundreds on each.
You need to come up with a total of 4 Sitemap files and one among these would be an index sitemap that lists the other 3 Sitemap.xml files with URLs.
Here you go for more: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
Best,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
What is the best tool for getting a SiteMap url for a website with over 4k pages?
I have just migrated my website from HUGO to Wordpress and I want to submit the sitemap to Google Search Console (because I haven't done so in a couple years). It looks like there are many tools for getting a sitemap file built. But I think they probably vary in quality. Especially considering the size of my site.
Technical SEO | | DanKellyCockroach2 -
I am trying to generate GEO meta tag for my website where on one page there are multiple locations My question is, Can I add GEO tagging for every address?
Am I restricted to 1 geo tag per page or can i add multiple geo tags ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Sitemap Rules
Hello there, I have some questions pertaining to sitemaps that I would appreciate some guidance on. 1. Can an XML sitemap contain URLs that are blocked by robots.txt? Logically, it makes sense to me to not include pages blocked by robots.txt but would like some clarity on the matter i.e. will having pages blocked by robots.txt in a sitemap, negatively impact the benefit of a sitemap? 2. Can a XML sitemap include URLs from multiple subdomains? For example: http://www.example.com/www-sitemap.xml would include the home page URL of two other subdomains i.e. http://blog.example.com/ & http://blog2.example.com/ Thanks
Technical SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
Not All Submitted URLs in Sitemap Get Indexed
Hey Guys, I just recognized, that of about 20% of my submitted URL's within the sitemap don't get indexed, at least when I check in the webmaster tools. There is of about 20% difference between the submitted and indexed URLs. However, as far as I can see I don't get within webmaster tools the information, which specific URLs are not indexed from the sitemap, right? Therefore I checked every single page in the sitemap manually by putting site:"URL" into google and every single page of the sitemap shows up. So in reality every page should be indexed, but why does webmaster tools shows something different? Thanks for your help on this 😉 Cheers
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
If Google's index contains multiple URLs for my homepage, does that mean the canonical tag is not working?
I have a site which is using canonical tags on all pages, however not all duplicate versions of the homepage are 301'd due to a limitation in the hosting platform. So some site visitors get www.example.com/default.aspx while others just get www.example.com. I can see the correct canonical tag on the source code of both versions of this homepage, but when I search Google for the specific URL "www.example.com/default.aspx" I see that they've indexed that specific URL as well as the "clean" one. Is this a concern... shouldn't Google only show me the clean URL?
Technical SEO | | JMagary0 -
Lost with conical, nofollow noindex. Not sure how to use it on a dyanmic php site with multiple region select options
I have a site with multiple regions the main page after a region is selected is login.php but the regions are defined by ?rid=11 , 12, etc. These are being picked up as duplicate content but they are all different regions. As i hired external php coders to develop most of the site I am scared to start meddling with any of the raw code and would like some advise on how to not show these as duplicate content. should i use noindex nofollow or connical? if Connical how do i set it up on the main login.php page? p.s. i am an extreme nube to seo
Technical SEO | | moby1230 -
Robots.txt Sitemap with Relative Path
Hi Everyone, In robots.txt, can the sitemap be indicated with a relative path? I'm trying to roll out a robots file to ~200 websites, and they all have the same relative path for a sitemap but each is hosted on its own domain. Basically I'm trying to avoid needing to create 200 different robots.txt files just to change the domain. If I do need to do that, though, is there an easier way than just trudging through it?
Technical SEO | | MRCSearch0 -
Robots.txt versus sitemap
Hi everyone, Lets say we have a robots.txt that disallows specific folders on our website, but a sitemap submitted in Google Webmaster Tools that lists content in those folders. Who wins? Will the sitemap content get indexed even if it's blocked by robots.txt? I know content that is blocked by robot.txt can still get indexed and display a URL if Google discovers it via a link so I'm wondering if that would happen in this scenario too. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | anthematic0