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.
Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?
-
Hi all
I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it.
The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me!
Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing?
Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site?
Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated.
Kris
-
It would certainly not have any impact on the existing rankings and crawl rate. infact the crawl rate would improve
-
Hi Khem
Yes I fully understood your response, thank you.
We always do sumbit a sitemap file for every site we build however we never really update the sitemap from there on, we tend to leave the search engines to crawl the site in order to find new pages or detect pages that have been removed. I assume this is a normal practice for many other developers out there?
We always do a 301 redirect for pages which have been un-published such as old products and categories.
My main concern was actually creating a new sitemap file every day and if this would have any effect on the existing rankings, or crawl rate of the site. I guess not!
Kris
-
Well to answer you question. Yes, you should always use xml sitemap also submit it with search engines. It helps search engines to access all the pages of your websites. If fact you can even tell search engines about your most important and less important pages.
It also enables you to tell Search Engines about the content update frequency so that search engine could crawl those again which you update daily/ weekly.
Furthermore, there is no problem if you update the XML file daily as long as you're not removing pages. However, if you need to remove pages, keep them in sitemap for at least one week and redirect old pages to new ones.
Hope I was able to understand your question and answered properly
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
-
Should we use Cloudflare
Hi all, we want to speed up our website (hosted in Wordpress, traffic around 450,000 page views monthly), we use lots of images. And we're wondering about setting up on Cloudflare, however after searching a bit in Google I have seen some people say the change in IP, or possible sharing of Its with bad neighbourhoods, can really hit search rankings. So, I was wondering what the latest thinking is on this subject, would the increased speed and local server locations be a boost for SEO, moreso than a potential loss of rankings for changing IP? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tiromedia1 -
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
My video sitemap is not being index by Google
Dear friends, I have a videos portal. I created a video sitemap.xml and submit in to GWT but after 20 days it has not been indexed. I have verified in bing webmaster as well. All videos are dynamically being fetched from server. My all static pages have been indexed but not videos. Please help me where am I doing the mistake. There are no separate pages for single videos. All the content is dynamically coming from server. Please help me. your answers will be more appreciated................. Thanks
Technical SEO | | docbeans0 -
Sitemap indexed pages dropping
About a month ago I noticed my pages indexed from my sitemap are dropping.There are 134 pages in my sitemap and only 11 are indexed. It used to be 117 pages and just died off quickly. I still seem to be getting consistant search traffic but I'm just not sure whats causing this. There are no warnings or manual actions required in GWT that I can find.
Technical SEO | | zenstorageunits0 -
Host sitemaps on S3?
Hey guys, I run a dynamic web service and I will start building static sitemaps for it pretty soon. The fact that my app lives in a multitude of servers doesn't make it easy to distribute frequently updated static files throughout the servers. My idea was to host the files in AWS S3 and point my robots.txt sitemap directive there. I'll use a sitemap index so, every other sitemap will be hosted on S3 as well. I could dynamically mirror the content from the files in S3 through my app, but that would be a little more resource intensive than just serving the static files from a common place. Any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tanlup0 -
Move established site from .co.uk to .org - good or bad idea?
I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own. The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic. The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains. So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!) We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line. I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely. However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic. Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t Thanks in advance for your advice. Adrian.
Technical SEO | | Zilla0 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!0 -
Schema for Price Comparison Services - Good or Bad?
Hey guys, I was just wondering what the whole schema.org markup means for people that run search engines (i.e. for a niche, certain products) or price comparison engines in general. The intend behind schema.org was to help the engines better understand the pages content. Well, I guess such services don't necessarily want Google to understand that they're just another search engine (and thus might get thrown out of the index for polluting it with search result pages). I see two possible scenarios: either not implement them or implement them in a way that makes the site not look like an aggregator, i.e. by only marking up certain products with unique text. Any thoughts? Does the SEOmoz team has any advice on that? Best,
Technical SEO | | derderko
schuon0