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
-
Spam URL'S in search results
We built a new website for a client. When I do 'site:clientswebsite.com' in Google it shows some of the real, recently submitted pages. But it also shows many pages of spam url results, like this 'clientswebsite.com/gockumamaso/22753.htm' - all of which then go to the sites 404 page. They have page titles and meta descriptions in Chinese or Japanese too. Some of the urls are of real pages, and link to the correct page, despite having the same Chinese page titles and descriptions in the SERPS. When I went to remove all the spammy urls in Search Console (it only allowed me to temporarily hide them), a whole load of new ones popped up in the SERPS after a day or two. The site files itself are all fine, with no errors in the server logs. All the usual stuff...robots.txt, sitemap etc seems ok and the proper pages have all been requested for indexing and are slowly appearing. The spammy ones continue though. What is going on and how can I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Digital-Murph0 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | BestRide0 -
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0 -
Should each new blog post be added to Sitemap.xml
Hello everyone, I have a website that has only static content. I have recently added a Blog to my website and I am wondering if I need to add each new Blog post to my Sitemap.xml file? Or is there another way/better way to get the Blog posting index? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | threebiz0 -
Google's "cache:" operator is returning a 404 error.
I'm doing the "cache:" operator on one of my sites and Google is returning a 404 error. I've swapped out the domain with another and it works fine. Has anyone seen this before? I'm wondering if G is crawling the site now? Thx!
Technical SEO | | AZWebWorks0 -
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 -
Include pagination in sitemap.xml?
Curious on peoples thoughts around this. Since restructuring our site we have seen a massive uplift in pages indexed and organic traffic with our pagination. But we haven't yet included a sitemap.xml. It's an ancient site that never had one. Given that Google seems to be loving us right now, do we even need a sitemap.xml - aside from the analytical benefis in WM Tools? Would you include pagination URL's (don't worry, we have no duplicate content) in the sitemap.xml? Cheers.
Technical SEO | | sichristie0 -
Does 'framing' a website create duplicate content?
Something I have not come across before, but hope others here are able offer advice based on experience: A client has independently created a series of mini-sites, aimed at targeting specific locations. The tactic has worked very well and they have achieved a large amount of well targeted traffic as a result. Each mini-site is different but then in the nav, if you want to view prices or go to the booking page, that then links to what at first appears to be their main site. However, you then notice that the URL is actually situated on the mini-site. What they have done is 'framed' the main site so that it appears exactly the same even when navigating through this exact replica site. Checking the code, there is almost nothing there - in fact there is actually no content at all. Below the head, there is a piece of code: <frameset rows="*" framespacing=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="[http://www.example.com](view-source:http://www.yellowskips.com/)" frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0> <noframes>Your browser does not support frames. Click [here](http://www.example.com) to view.noframes> frameset> Given that main site content does not appear to show in the source code, do we have an issue with duplicate content? This issue is that these 'referrals' are showing in Analytics, despite the fact that the code does not appear in the source, which is slightly confusing for me. They have done this without consultation and I'm very concerned that this could potentially be creating duplicate content of their ENTIRE main site on dozens of mini-sites. I should also add that there are no links to the mini-sites from the main site, so if you guys advise that this is creating duplicate content, I would not be worried about creating a link-wheel if I advise them to link directly to the main site rather than the framed pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0