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.
Is there a way for me to automatically download a website's sitemap.xml every month?
-
From now on we want to store all our sitemap.xml over the next years. Its a nice archive to have that allows us to analyse how many pages we have on our website and which ones were removed/redirected.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
-
If you use a MySQL database to store your website data, I think that to do this kind of automatic "archival" work by creating an automatic PHP script would take between 2 to 5 hours work. I don't see why it should take more than that.
If someone tells you that it is going to take more than that, I would be suspicious. Either the programmer is not good enough, or wants to cheat on you. That unfortunately happens more than you think!!
Be sure to ask for a step-by-step description of how they plan to complete the job. If you have doubts, please feel free to ask me, I am a pretty expert PHP programmer. I don't work for others, but just for myself (I built and keep tweaking my own websites virtualsheetmusic.com, musicianspage.com and others with very little help from external programmers).
Good luck!
-
Hi Fabrizo,
How long would it take for a PHP programmer to write this code approximately? Since we would have to outsource this I would like an indication to oversee costs involved.
Thanks!
-
The way I would do it would be to make a simple PHP (or Perl) program that every day, week or month (as you may need it), archives your sitemap.xml on a specific directory on your server, and possibly zip it. As a PHP programmer myself, I can tell you that that's really simply to do. Just ask to a PHP programmer, I am sure it will make it in a couple hours!
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
-
.xml sitemap showing in SERP
Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.
Technical SEO | | Kyleroe950 -
Finding websites that don't have meta descriptions
Hi everyone, as a way to find new business leads I thought about targeting websites that have poor meta descriptions or where they are simply missing. A quick look at SERPs shows this is still a major issue for many businesses. Is there any way I can quickly find pages for which meta description is lacking? Thank you! Best regards, Florian
Technical SEO | | agencepicnic0 -
301 Redirects Relating to Your XML Sitemap
Lets say you've got a website and it had quite a few pages that for lack of a better term were like an infomercial, 6-8 pages of slightly different topics all essentially saying the same thing. You could all but call it spam. www.site.com/page-1 www.site.com/page-2 www.site.com/page-3 www.site.com/page-4 www.site.com/page-5 www.site.com/page-6 Now you decided to consolidate all of that information into one well written page, and while the previous pages may have been a bit spammy they did indeed have SOME juice to pass through. Your new page is: www.site.com/not-spammy-page You then 301 redirect the previous 'spammy' pages to the new page. Now the question, do I immediately re-submit an updated xml sitemap to Google, which would NOT contain all of the old URL's, thus making me assume Google would miss the 301 redirect/seo juice. Or do I wait a week or two, allow Google to re-crawl the site and see the existing 301's and once they've taken notice of the changes submit an updated sitemap? Probably a stupid question I understand, but I want to ensure I'm following the best practices given the situation, thanks guys and girls!
Technical SEO | | Emory_Peterson0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Found a Typo in URL, what's the best practice to fix it?
Wordpress 3.4, Yoast, Multisite The URL is supposed to be "www.myexample.com/great-site" but I just found that it's "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" It is a relatively new site but we already pointed several internal links to "www.myexample.com/gre-atsite" What's the best practice to correct this? Which option is more desirable? 1.Creating a new page I found that Yoast has "301 redirect" option in the Advanced tap Can I just create a new page(exact same page) and put noindex, nofollow and redirect it to http://www.myexample.com/great-site OR 2. htacess redirect rule simply change the URL to http://www.myexample.com/great-site and update it, and add Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | joony2008
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^http://www.myexample.com/gre-atsite$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.myexample.com/great-site$1 [R=301,L]0 -
Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?
I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Is "last modified" time in XML Sitemaps important?
My Tech lead is concerned that his use of a script to generate XML sitemaps for some client sites may be causing negative issues for those sites. His concern centers around the fact that the script generates a sitemap which indicates that every URL page in the site was last modified at the exact same date and time. I have never heard anything to indicate that this might be a problem, but I do know that the sitemaps I generate for other client sites can choose server response or not. What is the best way to generate the sitemap? Last mod from actual time modified, or all set at one date and time?
Technical SEO | | ShaMenz0