Are xml sitemaps a thing of the past?
-
We had an internal debate about the importance of having a sitemap.xml on your website. Basically, there is Google documentation that indicates a sitemap.xml is due diligence: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156184
And other authoritative forums, blogposts, etc. which indicate that sitemap creation and maintenance is a waste of your time, e.g. http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/4803/the-sitemap-paradox/
A bigger question is: Are there cases in which not having a sitemap.xml actually became detrimental or risky?
Thanks in advance!
-
As long as you keep it up to date there should only be advantages. I use a free program called GsiteCrawler which runs once a week (automated with task scheduler) so it causes me zero maintenance time and I always have an up to date list of URL's for the search engines.
-
You do want to make sure your sitemap is clean. Bing has stated that if over 1% of your xml sitemap URLs have errors, they'll ignore the entire sitemap.
I do agree with David about the benefits and ability to use it as a diagnostic as well as an aid in getting your content indexed.
-
I don't know that not having one is detrimental or risky, but there are certainly advantages of having an xml sitemap. Not the least of which is being able to submit them to the search engines (Google Webmaster Tools for example) and seeing how well indexed your site is. You can also submit your images via sitemap and see how well indexed they are also.
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 kind of impact does a 404 have in a sitemap regarding ranking?
We recently had a site update where our robots file disallowed our sitemap for about two weeks. When we found the problem and resubmitted the sitemap to Google Search Console, it found a 404 error. Does this have any impact on ranking or visibility if we are still recovering from the disallow?
Algorithm Updates | | GaryBlanchard0 -
Sitemaps for landing pages
Good morning MOZ Community, We've been doing some re-vamping recently on our primary sitemap, and it's currently being reindexed by the search engines. We have also been developing landing pages, both for SEO and SEM. Specifically for SEO, the pages are focused on specific, long-tail search terms for a number of our niche areas of focus. Should I, or do I need to be considering a separate sitemap for these? Everything I have read about sitemaps simply indicates that if a site has over 50 thousand pages or so, then you need to split a sitemap. Do I need to worry about a sitemap for landing pages? Or simply add them to our primary sitemap? Thanks in advance for your insights and advice.
Algorithm Updates | | bwaller0 -
How is this possible? #2 ranking with NO on-page keywords, no backlinks, no sitemap...
Hi everybody. I have a question ... I'm totally stumped. This question is being asked today (November 16th, 2015) just after Google updated something in their algorithm. Nobody seems to know what they did. and it has something to do with the new "Rank Brain" system they're now using. My niche is Logo Design Software (https://www.thelogocreator.com). I had the keywords "logo creator" on the page roughly 7 times. After Google updated, I lost about 10 spots and as of this writing, I've dropped to #15. So, maybe I over optimized. fine. Noticing that for the keyword "logo creator" ... NONE of the top 14 spots actually have "logo creator" in their page title and NONE of them have more that 2 instances (if any) of the keyword "logo creator" on the actual page. So I removed ALL instances of my keyword "logo creator" from my home page - used the Webmaster's Fetch Tool and moved up a few spots instantly. So what the heck? And the #2 spot for that keyword is www.logomakr.com - they have NO words at all on their pages, no blog, no sitemap and far fewer links than anybody in the top 10. Can anybody reading this shed some light? Marc Marc Sylvester
Algorithm Updates | | Laughingbird
Laughingbird Software0 -
Does Bing Support same sitemap for full site, mobile, and images?
We have 1 sitemap for our desktop site, mobile site, and images. This works for Google, but I'm not sure if it's supported by Bing or if they require separate sitemaps. Anyone know?
Algorithm Updates | | YairSpolter0 -
What is the point of XML site maps?
Given how Google uses Page Rank to pass link juice from one page to the next if Google can only find a page in an XML site map it will have no link juice and appear very low in search results if at all. The priority in XML sitemaps field also seems pretty much irrelevant to me. Google determines the priority of a page based on the number of inbound links to it. If your site is designed properly the most important pages will have the most links. The changefreq field could maybe be useful if you have existing pages that are updated regularly. Though it seems to me Google tends to crawl sites often enough that it isn't useful. Plus for most of the web the significant content of an existing page doesn't change regularly, instead new pages are added with new content. This leaves the lastmod field as being potentially useful. If Google starts each crawl of your site by grabbing the sitemap and then crawls the pages whose lastmod date is newer than its last crawl of the site their crawling could be much more efficient. The site map would not need to contain every single page of the site, just the ones that have changed recently. From what I've seen most site map generation tools don't do a great job with the fields other than loc. If Google can't trust the priority, changefreq, or lastmod fields they won't put any weight on them. It seems to me the best way to rank well in Google is by making a good, content-rich site that is easily navigable by real people (and that's just the way Google wants it). So, what's the point of XML site maps? Does the benefit (if any) outweigh the cost of developing and maintaining them?
Algorithm Updates | | pasware0 -
Submitting Audio Sitemaps?
There are a number of pages on our website where Bands upload their latest tracks so visitors can listen to them. It occurred to me that maybe I am missing a trick and should submit an audio-sitemap.xml to Google. However I can't seem to find any articles about it on Google Help, but know that video and image sitemaps are used. Does anyone know if audio sitemaps can be submitted and if they are of SEO value? Website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Algorithm Updates | | Ubique0 -
Is a New Visits ratio of 39% a really bad thing?
I do a lot of work for a large estate agency based almost solely in London. They get a considerable amount of traffc and all other stats, on the whole, are always positive. The only thing that is decreasing regularly is the percentage of new traffic. My understanding of user behaviour for this market is that no one in their right mind would make an enquiry or arrange a booking without a) looking at the property at least twice themeselves (once to before the enquiry and once before a viewing) and b) more than likely show a partner. Plus the site is well laid out and useful so I believe users are favouring our site over the comparison sites. So questions: Should I be panicing What is the most efficent way of increasing new visits? Things to note: The HTML titles throughout the site are a bit of a mess - key word rich but too long and inconsistent. Could this be a contributing factor to the CTR? Also in the past month we appeared in over 4k different queries but our non branded impressions are down 22%. Could more concise, less keyword stuffed HTML titles help this? Do I need to look at the page titles to ensure that they contain the exact phrases that are in decline? Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | SoundinTheory0 -
Big site SEO: To maintain html sitemaps, or scrap them in the era of xml?
We have dynamically updated xml sitemaps which we feed to Google et al. Our xml sitemap is updated constantly, and takes minimal hands on management to maintain. However we still have an html version (which we link to from our homepage), a legacy from back in the pre-xml days. As this html version is static we're finding it contains a lot of broken links and is not of much use to anyone. So my question is this - does Google (or any other search engine) still need both, or are xml sitemaps enough?
Algorithm Updates | | linklater0