XML Sitemap Index Percentage (Large Sites)
-
Hi all
I'm wanting to find out from those who have experience dealing with large sites (10s/100s of millions of pages).
What's a typical (or highest) percentage of indexed pages vs. submitted pages you've seen? This information can be found in webmaster tools where Google shows you the pages submitted & indexed for each of your sitemap.
I'm trying to figure out whether,
- The average index % out there
- There is a ceiling (i.e. will never reach 100%)
- It's possible to improve the indexing percentage further
Just to give you some background, sitemap index files (according to schema.org) have been implemented to improve crawl efficiency and I'm wanting to find out other ways to improve this further.
I've been thinking about looking at the URL parameters to exclude as there are hundreds (e-commerce site) to help Google improve crawl efficiency and utilise the daily crawl quote more effectively to discover pages that have not been discovered yet.
However, I'm not sure yet whether this is the best path to take or I'm just flogging a dead horse if there is such a ceiling or if I'm already at the average ballpark for large sites.
Any suggestions/insights would be appreciated. Thanks.
-
I've worked on a site that was ~100 million pages, and I've seen indexation percentages ranging from 8% to 95%. When dealing with sites this size, there are so, so many issues at play, and there are so few sites of this size that finding an average probably won't do you much good.
Rather than focusing on whether or not you have enough pages indexed based on averages, you should focus on two key questions: "do my sitemaps only include pages that would make great search engine entry pages" and "have I done everything possible to eliminate junk pages that are wasting crawl bandwidth."
Of course, making sure you don't have any duplicate content, thin content, or poor on-site optimization issues should also be a focus.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I believe any site can have 100% of it's search entry worthy pages indexed, but sites of that size rarely have ALL of their pages indexed since sites that large often have a ton of pages that don't make great search results.
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
-
Where to point canonical for m-dot site in the wake of Mobile-First Indexing
My client currently use an m-dot URL for their mobile site and while conducting a technical audit for their web properties, we have noticed that their desktop is using a self-referencing rel="canonical" while their mobile m-dot has no rel="canonical" tags. While our initial recommendation is to point the mobile m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="canonical" and the desktop point to the mobile using a rel="alternative," there have been hesitations about mobile first indexing and canonical tags. If Google will use the m-dot for indexing purposes moving forward, is the progressive recommendation to have the desktop point to the m-dot using a rel="canonical" and the m-dot point to the desktop using a rel="alternative" or to maintain the initially stated recommendation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Derek_Hawk0 -
Sitemap: unique sitemap or different sitemaps by Country
Hi guys, i have a question about sitemaps. We are doing an international site, e.x. www.offers.com for landing page and www.offers.com/br for brazil, www.offers.com/it for italy, etc... i don't if we should do an unique sitemap for all countries or separate sitemaps by country, e.x.: unique sitemap: www.offers.com/sitemap.xml - including all sitemaps www.offers.com/br/sitemap.xml - sitemap for brazil market only. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Google does not index image sitemap
Hi, we put an image sitemap in the searchconsole/webmastertools http://www.sillasdepaseo.es/sillasdepaseo/sitemap-images.xml it contains only the indexed products and all images on the pages. We also claimed the CDN in the searchconsole http://media.sillasdepaseo.es/ It has been 2 weeks now, Google indexes the pages, but not the images. What can we do? Thanks in advance. Dieter Lang
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco0 -
Sitemaps: HTML and/or XML?
Can someone explain sitemaps, and if you need html and/or xml? I have a site with a few html sitemaps, one for products, one for categories. I have another site with just one xml sitemap for my entire site (which has massive pages, 600k+). Should I be dividing the site with massive pages into html sitemaps like my other site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Network Of Sites...
Hi Guys, Just wondering if anyone can help me out... We have recently been hit by the Google penguin update and I'm currently working though all the bad / spammy backlinks that previous SEO companies have built for us. I have come across 1 particular domain www.justgoodcars.com they seem to have a lot of different domain names: <colgroup><col width="390"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottBaxterWW
| http://www.justpulsarcars.com/nissan-pulsar-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html |
| http://www.justpumacars.com/ford-puma-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html |
| http://www.justpuntocars.com/dutch-site/fiat-punto-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html?selectcountry1=United_Kingdom |
| http://www.justpuntocars.com/fiat-punto-warranties/1/United_Kingdom/all.html?selectcountry1=United_Kingdom | Now all of theses domains names have exactly the same IP Address?? Above is just a few I would say there are 100s of them. Do you think this could have an affect on us? Thanks, Scott0 -
How do I create a XML Sitemap?
It appears that the free online tools limit the number of URLs they'll include. What tools have you had success with?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaHoku1 -
Site dancing
Hi guys I have a site which is dancing. I mean one day is on position 20 , if I put more backlinks is falling, after rising again,, I dont know what is going on. The site is 2 years old, pr 2, authority 35. Why this is happening? Usually when he appears again is ranking higher, but today he disappear totally from rankings. Maybe return tomorrow? But anyway why is dancing? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Questions about turning my wordpress site into an ecommerce site. Experience needed.
I have a wordpress site that is about a product that is now getting some great traffic. Right now It has affiliate stuff on it. I want to sell my own product so I will be turning this wordpress site into an ecommerce site. I want to redesign it so I am not looking for simple plugins to just add a cart. The part I am really confused about is what to do with my posts and categories? How does that work when turning this site into an ecommerce site? Lets say the site is "hats for adults" My post pages are things like "funny hats for adults", "hats for adult men" etc etc. Would I turn these posts pages into like category pages that have a category of products. Or should I create real categories and have my developer turn those into the ecommerce category pages and then redirect my posts to those categories? Maybe I don't even know what I am talking about. Is this even making sense? This is a small site (5posts and 1 category) and most of the traffic will come from the homepage keywords anyways.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0