Trouble Indexing one of our sitemaps
-
Hi everyone thanks for your help. Any feedback is appreciated. We have three separate sitemaps:
blog/sitemap.xml
events.xml
sitemap.xml
Unfortunately we keep trying to get our events sitemap to pickup and it just isn't happening for us. Any input on what could be going on?
-
There also seem to be url's which are duplicated:
/new-york-city-tickets/elektra-theatre-tickets/50-shades-the-musical-mar-21-2015-1283412.html
/new-york-city-tickets/elektra-theatre-tickets/50-shades-the-musical-mar-25-2015-1283241.html
/new-york-city-tickets/elektra-theatre-tickets/50-shades-the-musical-mar-27-2015-1283246.html=> 3 different url's - but the content seems to be identical on these pages.
You could try to do a full crawl with Screamingfrog - and check the semi-duplicates on your site (identical H1, metadescription,... and so on)
-
If I do a site:yoursite.com/minneapolis-tickets in Google I get results - so these pages seem to be in the index, even if this is not shown on the sitemap level in WMT.
I notice you use noindex on a substantial number of pages (for expired events) - maybe it would be better to use the unavailable after meta tag. See also: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2334932/ecommerce-seo-tips-for-unavailable-products-from-googles-matt-cutts
-
Update - if your site is identical to your username - the cause is almost certain related to the lack of indexable content on these pages. The event pages, while very userfriendly & valuable for end users, are too light for Google in terms of content. Apart from the title, most of this pages are quite identical (the maps, dates & prices are different) if you look at the source code.
-
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for your response. We have used fetch as google to test out a couple of the URL's and it worked on 1 out of 3. All the pages do have light content and I checked on the pages that we fetched that weren't indexed and we don't have any noindex, nofollow tags on the page. It is frustrating as we can see our competitors event pages indexing with no content. So any help is appreciated.
-
There could be many reasons why this sitemap is not indexed.
Are there any duplicates between the different sitemaps (if there are duplicates, they are not listed as indexed in the 2nd sitemap)
It could also be that the pages are too light in terms of content to get indexed - example - if you only list the event name, date, and place, without additional content it will probably not get indexed.
Are you sure that all the url's in these sitemap can be indexed (not blocked by robots.txt or noindex tag)- you could try a few url's of the sitemap in Fetch like google and see if they are fetched properly.
rgds
Dirk
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
-
Is it worth creating an Image Sitemap?
We've just installed the server side script 'XML Sitemaps' on our eCommerce site. The script gives us the option of (easily) creating an image sitemap but I'm debating whether there is any reason for us to do so. We sell printer cartridges and so all the images will be pretty dry (brand name printer cartridge in front of a box being a favourite). I can't see any potential customers to search for an image as a route in to the site and Google appears to be picking up our images on it's own accord so wonder if we'll just be crawling the site and submitting this information for no real reason. From a quality perspective would Google give us any kind of kudos for providing an Image Sitemap? Would it potentially increase their crawl frequency or, indeed, reduce the load on our servers as they wouldn't have to crawl for all the images themselves?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisHolgate
I can't stress how little of a hardship it will be to create one of these automatically daily but am wondering if, like Meta Keywords, there is any benefit to doing so?1 -
Only the mobile version of the site is being indexed
We've got an interesting situation going on at the moment where a recently on-boarded clients site is being indexed and displayed, but it's on the mobile version of the site that is showing in serps. A quick rundown of the situation. Retail shopping center with approximately 200 URLS Mobile version of the site is www.mydomain.com/m/ XML sitemap submitted to Google with 202 URLs, 3 URLS indexed Doing site:www.mydomain.com in a Google search brings up the home page (desktop version) and then everything else is /m/ versions. There is no rel="canonical" on mobile site pages to their desktop counterpart (working on fixing that) We have limited CMS access, but developers are open to working with us on whatever is needed. Within desktop site source code, there are no "noindex, nofollow, etc" issues on the pages. No manual actions, link issues, etc Has anyone ever encoutnered this before? Any input or thoughts are appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregWalt0 -
One Site vs. Many
This is a question that I am not sure has a "right" answer. I am just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on this. I can see benefit of both sides of the coin. In your opinion, is it better to have one large e-commerce site with all of your content on the same domain or is it better to have multiple more targeted domains with your content broken up into smaller chunks? The reason I ask is, I feel like while multiple more targeted sites certainly have the benefit of focus, aren't you taking all your traffic and content, splitting it up and leaving you with several sites that most likely are getting less traffic than one large site would. All opinions welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey0 -
Sort term product pages and fast indexing - XML sitemaps be updated daily, weekly, etc?
Hi everyone, I am currently working on a website that the XML sitemap is set to update weekly. Our client has requested that this be changed to daily. The real issue is that the website creates short term product pages (10-20 days) and then the product page URL's go 404. So the real problem is quick indexing not daily vs weekly sitemap. I suspect that daily vs weekly sitemaps may help solve the indexing time but does not completely solve the problem. So my question for you is how can I improve indexing time on this project? The real problem is how to get the product pages indexed and ranking before the 404 page shows u?. . Here are some of my initial thoughts and background on the project. Product pages are only available for 10 to 20 days (Auction site).Once the auction on the product ends the URL goes 404. If the pages only exist for 10 to 20 days (404 shows up when the auction is over), this sucks for SEO for several reasons (BTW I was called onto the project as the SEO specialist after the project and site were completed). Reason 1 - It is highly unlikely that the product pages will rank (positions 1 -5) since the site has a very low Domain Authority) and by the time Google indexes the link the auction is over therefore the user sees a 404. Possible solution 1 - all products have authorship from a "trustworthy" author therefore the indexing time improves. Possible solution 2 - Incorporate G+ posts for each product to improve indexing time. There is still a ranking issue here since the site has a low DA. The product might appear but at the bottom of page 2 or 1..etc. Any other ideas? From what I understand, even though sitemaps are fed to Google on a weekly or daily basis this does not mean that Google indexes them right away (please confirm). Best case scenario - Google indexes the links every day (totally unrealistic in my opinion), URL shows up on page 1 or 2 of Google and slowly start to move up. By the time the product ranks in the first 5 positions the auction is over and therefore the user sees a 404. I do think that a sitemap updated daily is better for this project than weekly but I would like to hear the communities opinion. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Sitemap Submission
I was wondering if anyone has any insight into Sitemap submission with Google. I submitted a XML Sitemap for my new site at the end of October. Since then GWT says it is pending. l have made a few changes to the site and added some new pages so l decided to submit an updated XML sitemap. This was about a week ago and is also still pending. Does anybody know how long this process should take and if it is the reason why the site hasn't started ranking for any of our targeted search terms as yet? The site is www.theremovalistsguide.com.au
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobSchofield0 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Why is a page with a noindex code being indexed?
I was looking through the pages indexed by Google (with site:www.mywebsite.com) and one of the results was a page with "noindex, follow" in the code that seems to be a page generated by blog searches. Any ideas why it seems to be indexed or how to de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Canonical URLs and Sitemaps
We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names. So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category. And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL? In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345. This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345. Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo0