Question about construction of our sitemap URL in robots.txt file
-
Hi all,
This is a Webmaster/SEO question. This is the sitemap URL currently in our robots.txt file:
http://www.ccisolutions.com/sitemap.xml
As you can see it leads to a page with two URLs on it. Is this a problem? Wouldn't it be better to list both of those XML files as separate line items in the robots.txt file?
Thanks!
Dana
-
Hi Jarno,
Thanks so very much! I have to say I am really liking the A1 generator. How awesome of you to follow up. I really appreciate that. Yes, if you want to send me the complete sitemap via PM that would be awesome. I certainly hope I can return the favor Happy Holidays!
Dana
-
Yes, we definitely use XENU, but I think I like Screaming Frog a bit better (although our IT Director swears it's broken).
-
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for the update. Yes, I looked at it too and other than it not being "pretty" XML, the data seemed to be okay. The one thing the A! generator did that we couldn't do was assign the values for importance and frequency specific pages are modified. If that data is accurate, that's pretty cool. I'm just not sure, although it seems it did identify pages that are modified more frequently correctly. I have 30 days to play with the free trial, but so far I think I like it a lot.
Dana
-
Dana,
It just finished scanning here are the results:
Internal Sitemap URL's:
- Listed found: 5248
- Listed deduced: 5301
- Analyzed content: 3110
- Analyzed references: 3176
External URL's:
- Listed found: 700
When i look at the overview of the result i see a number of 301 redirects, canonical redirects (when tested again the get code 200 OK). But I see a lot op pages.
When i build the sitemap it generates one file (no idea why not more then one) with all the links in the document. Google's sitemap protocol states it should be like the schema at sitemaps.org which it does. The entire protocol of sitemap.org states that a sitemap can not hold over 50,000 links and should be smaller then 10 MB in filesize.
The one I just build for you is only 1 MB and contains less url's then 50,000 and thus is it allowed by Google.
http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
I can send you the entire version of the sitemap if you'd like in a personal message or through e-mail?
Hope this helps you further.
kind regards
Jarno
-
i started the scan and it's still busy:
2500 analyzed references so far.
Let you know how it turns out.
Jarno
-
Thanks Jarno. I really appreciate that. Yes, I had it selected to just scan for images (as prompted when I attempted to create an image sitemap). Let me know what you see? I am wondering if it is going around in circles?
Dana
-
Dana,
sometimes that happens. Are you scanning for images or are you scanning the site?
i will check your site tomorrow with my full version and see what it does.
Sometimes with some websites you'll get things like this but it can be loads of things. 3500 pages should not take 2 hours but only a couple of minutes. I'll check it first thing tomorrow. A1 is not installed on my laptop..
Let you know tomorrow.
Kind regards
Jarno
-
A1 Sitemap does 2 things:
1 ) It builds a file names sitemap.xml which contains all files on the website (not conform the google requirements
-
It builds a number of files listed in sitemap-index.xml for every 100 pages in one sitemap. So if you're website contains 2800 pages You'll get loads of files: 28 sitemap-1.xml etc and 1 sitemap-index.xml file. Which does meet the Google standards. Afterwards you can do 2 things in Google webmasters:
-
enter the sitemap-index.xml file as a sitemap -> Google will follow everything and come to the grand total of 2800 pages.
-
Enter each sitemap separately.-> same result but you can pinpoint better where you have a 100 pages and google only indexes fewer (can happen).
Hope this helps
-
-
Hi again Jarno,
Is it normal for A1's sitemap generator's "Scan website" function for images to take over two hours? Our site is about 3,500 URLs. So far it has under "Internal 'sitemap' URLs" Listed found: 82076 (and climbing every few seconds).
I am wondering if there isn't something wrong? (I don't have any frame of reference since I've never used it before). Thanks!
Dana
-
I'm not familiar with the A1 Sitemap generator, but regarding the sitemap protocol, there is a limit on the size of a single sitemap.xml file, so for large sites, the sitemap must be split into multiple sitemap.xml files. And, the protocol has a method for indexing these multiple sitemap.xml files. It's sort of like an index to an index. None of my sites exceed the sitemap file limit, so I don't know which sitemap generators use this approach, but I would guess many of them do.
Sitemap generators I have used include DMXZone which is a Dreamweaver plugin, and xml-sitemaps.com which includes a video sitemap generator.
Best,
ChristopherEDIT: PS: Your current sitemap looks fine to me.
-
Thanks Christopher,
Your answer took a noment to sink in, but I think I get it (I think I am coffee deprived this morning).
So, if I am using the A1 Sitemap generator that Jarno suggested, this sitemap index should automatically be generated based on the size of my generated sitemap. Is that correct?
-
Thanks Jarno,
I have downloaded and am trying the 30-day free trial of the A1 Sitemap Generator right now. Thanks for the tip. Can you comment on Christopher's remark below concerning sitemap indexes for larger sitemaps?
Can either you or Christopher give me more clarification on that. Is this what our IT director has attempted to do with the sitemap in our robots.txt file? If so, has it been done correctly?
Thanks!
-
There is a limit on the size of a sitemap and to allow for large sitemaps to be split into smaller sitemaps, the sitemap protocol includes a sitemapindex. See "Using Sitemap index files (to group multiple sitemap files)" here http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html. Of course, it's also possible to include the multiple sitemaps in the robot.txt file, but automated sitemap generators will likely use the sitemapindex feature so that the robots.txt file does not have to be modified as the size of the site changes.
Best,
Christopher -
Another tool to help generate a sitemap and even check broken links is called Xenu (weird logo, but good free product).
-
Dana,
the buildup of your sitemap.xml is very strange to me. I use an external program to build my sitemap.xml for me entire website.
You now have a link in your robots.txt file pointing to a sitemap which contains 2 files (both .xml) with een map of the site?
Why not use a program (free or paid like Microsys A1 (the one I use)) to build 1 sitemap.xml en point to this file from your robots.txt?
hope this helps
if you do have any questions, please let me know.
kind regards
Jarno
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
-
Robots.txt
Hi All Having a robots.txt looking like the below will this stop Google crawling the site User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | internetsalesdrive0 -
Robots.txt - "File does not appear to be valid"
Good afternoon Mozzers! I've got a weird problem with one of the sites I'm dealing with. For some reason, one of the developers changed the robots.txt file to disavow every site on the page - not a wise move! To rectify this, we uploaded the new robots.txt file to the domain's root as per Webmaster Tool's instructions. The live file is: User-agent: * (http://www.savistobathrooms.co.uk/robots.txt) I've submitted the new file in Webmaster Tools and it's pulling it through correctly in the editor. However, Webmaster Tools is not happy with it, for some reason. I've attached an image of the error. Does anyone have any ideas? I'm managing another site with the exact same robots.txt file and there are no issues. Cheers, Lewis FNcK2YQ
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Question about creating friendly URLs
I am working on creating new SEO friendly URLs for my company website. The products are the items with the highest search volume and each is very geo-specific
Technical SEO | | theLotter
There is not a high search volume for the geo-location associated with the product, but the searches we do get convert well. Do you think it is preferable to leave the location out of the URL or include it?0 -
Add selective URLs to an XML Sitemap
Hi! Our website has a very large no of pages. I am looking to create an XML Sitemap that contains only the most important pages (category pages etc). However, on crawling the website in a tool like Xenu (the others have a 500 page limit), I am unable to control which pages get added to the XML Sitemap, and which ones get excluded. Essentially, I only want pages that are upto 4 clicks away from my homepage to show up in the XML Sitemap. How should I create an XML sitemap, and at the same time control which pages of my site I add to it (category pages), and which ones I remove (product pages etc). Thanks in advance! Apurv
Technical SEO | | AB_Newbie0 -
Robots.txt crawling URL's we dont want it to
Hello We run a number of websites and underneath them we have testing websites (sub-domains), on those sites we have robots.txt disallowing everything. When I logged into MOZ this morning I could see the MOZ spider had crawled our test sites even though we have said not to. Does anyone have an ideas how we can stop this happening?
Technical SEO | | ShearingsGroup0 -
The use of robots.txt
Could someone please confirm that if I do not want to block any pages from my URL, then I do not need a robots.txt file on my site? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ICON_Malta0 -
Friendly URLs
Hi, I have an important news site and I am trying to implement user friendly URLs. Now, when you click a news in the homepage, it goes to a redirect.php page and then goes to a friendly url. the question is, It is better to have the friendly URL in the first link or it is the same for the robot having this in the finally url? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Canonical Question
Our site has thousands of items, however using the old "Widgets" analogy we are unsure on how to implement the canonical tag, and if we need to at all. At the moment our main product pages lists all different "widget" products on one page, however the user can visit other sub pages that filter out the different versions of the product. I.e. glass widgets (20 products)
Technical SEO | | Corpsemerch
glass blue widgets (15 products)
glass red widgets (5 products)
etc.... I.e. plastic widgets (70 products)
plastic blue widgets (50 products)
plastic red widgets (20 products)
etc.... As the sub pages are repeating products from the main widgets page we added the canonical tag on the sub pages to refer to the main widget page. The thinking is that Google wont hit us with a penalty for duplicate content. As such the subpages shouldnt rank very well but the main page should gather any link juice from these subpages? Typically once we added the canonical tag it was coming up to the penguin update, lost a 20%-30% of our traffic and its difficult not to think it was the canonical tag dropping our subpages from the serps. Im tempted to remove the tag and return to how the site used to be repeating products on subpages.. not in a seo way but to help visitors drill down to what they want quickly. Any comments would be welcome..0