Sitemap Update Frequency?
-
Hello,
My question today is regarding sitemaps. I'm often confused by this and because I am a bit obsessive I believe I may be giving myself more work than needed..
Basically my question is, do I need to update and/or re-generate my sitemap every time I make a change to the site? I mean, I must have to if I add a page, correct? And so in Google's Webmaster Tools, do I just delete the current sitemap and re-upload a new one for Google to crawl?
Is it possible to overdo this?
Any sitemap suggestions would be fantastic. I feel like there's been a few weeks where I've updated the sitemap daily and re-submitted it and I worry that might be hurting my site.
Thanks!
-
appreciate the input thank you. makes sense - throw the new sitemap on the server and let it happen. will do
thanks again all
-
Also something to consider is that you don't need to re-submit the sitemap ever whilst your sitemap is in the same location and has the same title it always did. Google will on a regular basis fetch that sitemap without resubmitting.
I would say update the sitemap if you've a new page or deleted it - but its not a huge issue really if you are out by a day or 14 - unless your site is very busy with lots of visitors it's not that important to google, also I find they prefer natural crawling and finding than being told there is one new page - this said a whole section change is definitely worth updating it.
-
That was exactly the answer I was looking for and makes perfect sense. I had a feeling I might be working too hard in that regard.
Thanks again!
-
As far as when to submit sitemaps, you do not "need" to even submit one. After your initial sitemap is submitted, as long as you have a strong interlinking structure in place, your new pages should be crawled. Submitting a sitemap when you add new pages is more or less a "heads-up" to Google saying, "I added new pages here... you should crawl them when you have time."
Now, if you remove pages from your site, you should also make sure that your sitemap reflects these changes. If you do not, you will start to get 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools.
I don't think you can overdo it; however, you would probably make less work for yourself if you only resubmitted when you are 100% sure you actually need to.
Does that make sense?
Mike
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
-
ECWID Ecommerce Sitemaps (Lack of)
Does anyone know if the lack of sitemaps on ECWID built sites is a negative for SEO? Does Google somehow index these sites and do they penalize because sites can't include the urls in sitemaps? Also, any idea how to build a sitemap to include ECWID shopping carts?
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Pagerank and SERP rankings downhill after site update
Our site underwent a major update in September 2012. We put the entire site in WordPress and did away with our static pages. Then, in February 2013, we moved our shopping cart pages from a subdomain to our main domain (in WordPress). In both cases, we had to implement a massive 301 redirect through htaccess as most of our URLs changed with the update. Our site consists of the shopping cart (WooCommerce), blog, and supporting pages. We noticed traffic starting to drop around the last week of November (2012) and it has steadily declined ever since. None of our shop pages have a pagerank with virtually all them showing a gray bar with question mark. Only the shop homepage has some pagerank -- that too from 4 previously to 2 now. Some of the words we used to rank very well for before, we don't even show in the first five pages anymore. At first, we thought it was a temporary situation that would self correct over time, but it doesn't seem to get better at all. All said, we have lost over 80% of our traffic from Google organic. Upon repeated reviews, the 301 redirects seem to be done correctly and we don't see any serious mistakes that could cause such a huge drop. So the question is are we missing something? Are we not looking at the right places? Any ideas where we might start looking? We're simply looking for ideas and a fresh perspective.
Web Design | | bizmanuals0 -
Did i got hit from some google updates.
Hello everybody, i got a problem and i hope someone can clear it up for me. my root domain authority is 42 and home page is 52 (jumped there only yesterday) ,while my google page rank is still PR2 (same for 3 month already). 1 month ago i changed my home page design (not the text) and since then my home page just disappeared from the search engines. can somebody look on my website www.kspiercing.com , and tell me if i got hit by some panda ,koala,penguin or some other sweet Google animal . thank you very much.
Web Design | | kspiercing0 -
Website Updates, will this affect my ranking/ DA or PA?
Hello All! My website is due for a big update soon, my current site is doing ok, however I want to update all of the content, structure, style and look of my whole site. I feel that with the way it's been going lately that it's time for an upgrade, my question is, will this affect my ranking? Will my page ranking's be affected? Will my DA be affected? I intend to optimize this new website perfectly too with all the things I've learnt since joining this forum. All the best, Paul
Web Design | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Why is there no sitemap.xml for SEOmoz?
I noticed that SEOmoz does not have a "root" sitemap called sitemap.xml. On the other hand, there do appear to be sitemaps for various sections of the such as http://www.seomoz.org/blog-sitemap.xml I was planning on having a root level sitemap that referenced difference sections of my site (blog, support, etc.) but I'm a little concerned that this site itself doesn't seem to be following that practice. Presumably this website is submitting the individual section maps to Google directly since they aren't linkable through sitemap.xml?
Web Design | | schof0 -
Mobile Sitemap for Site with Media Queries
I'm doing SEO for a site. It uses Media Queries and the CSS to automatically resize the site for the screen size in use. I.e. the site detects the screen size of say an iPhone and the CSS knows which elements to hide for that screen size and still make it look good. This is great because it will automatically cut down the content to display nicely on small screens - obviating the need for a separate mobile site. What kind of sitemap should be generated since the urls are for desktop and mobile use? Yoast (sweet SEO) said it should have both regular and mobile style sitemap to get both the regular and mobile bots to visit, but didn't elaborate on how that sitemap should look. Do you have a recommendation for how exactly the sitemap should look? Should the sitemap have the urls all twice, i.e. once regular and once with the mobile indicator?
Web Design | | GregoryHaze1 -
XML Sitemap that updates daily/weekly?
Hi, I have a sitemap on my site, that updates but it isn't a XML sitemap. See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/sitemap/ I have used some free software to crawl the site and create a sitemap of pages, however I think that if I were to upload the sitemap, it would be out of date as soon as I listed new products on the site, so would need to rerun it. Does anyone know how I can get this to refresh daily or weekly? Or any software that can do it? I have a web firm that are willing to do one, but our relationship is at an all time low and I don't want to hand over £200 for them to do one. Anyone with any ideas or advice? Thanks Will
Web Design | | WillBlackburn0
