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.
Resubmit sitemaps on every change?
-
Hello Mozers,
Our sitemaps were submitted to Google and Bing, and are successfully indexed. Every time pages are added to our store (ecommerce), we re-generate the xml sitemap.
My question is: should we be resubmitting the sitemaps every time their content change, or since they were submitted once can we assume that the crawlers will re-download the sitemaps by themselves (I don't like to assume).
What are best practices here?
Thanks!
-
Great follow up! Thanks for that. :^)
-
For anybody that is interested in knowing, after 10 days of webmaster monitoring, here are our conclusions:
We have 2 sitemaps (2 languages). It took a few days for Google to re-download the mains sitemap, and a few more days to download the secondary sitemap, however, the new sitemaps were both picked up by Google with no intervention on our part.
Bing, however, has still no downloaded either of the updated sitemaps.
Because it's so easy and isn't seen as bad practice, we will be manually re-submitting sitemap updated to both search engines.
Thanks!
-
Ryan gave an excellent answer. Google is using other clues to pick up on new pages I'm not saying don't submit your sitemap I'm just saying add structured data/schema into your store as well. Check your crawl budget and see if your site is eating up too much of it and not being indexed properly by Google.
A simple test to see if something is being blocked is to run your site through https://varvy.com/
If you do not know, I would stress using Deep Crawl or screaming frog SEO spider
Navigation Is often one of many can cause problems where your site will not be crawled correctly.
To determine whether or not you have to crawl budget issue we got each can make independent image sitemaps and index sitemaps as well just to be sure that Google is getting what you want to.
Like Ryan said check out
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669
Here is a Magento dynamic site map http://i.imgur.com/QKS0bgU.png
validate your sitemap check it for problems
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/site-validator/
https://moz.com/learn/seo/schema-structured-data
http://www.searchmetrics.com/news-and-events/schema-org-in-google-search-results/
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seo-for-marketplaces-ecommerce/
JSON-LD Microdata
https://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-snippets/#json
I hope this helps,
Thomas
-
Hello. You can check the Submitted vs Indexed count within Search Console to see whether or not your regenerated sitemap is being picked up already, but resubmitting a sitemap isn't an issue, and fairly easy to do, per Google:
Resubmit your sitemap
- Open the Sitemaps report
- Select the sitemap(s) you want to resubmit from the table
- Click the Resubmit sitemap button.
You can also resubmit a sitemap by sending an HTTP GET request to the following URL, specifying your own sitemap URL: http://google.com/ping?sitemap=http://www.example.com/my_sitemap.xml
Via: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669 Also from a FAQ in the Webmasters blog they state that, "Google does not penalize you for submitting a Sitemap."
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
-
Desktop & Mobile XML Sitemap Submitted But Only Desktop Sitemap Indexed On Google Search Console
Hi! The Problem We have submitted to GSC a sitemap index. Within that index there are 4 XML Sitemaps. Including one for the desktop site and one for the mobile site. The desktop sitemap has 3300 URLs, of which Google has indexed (according to GSC) 3,000 (approx). The mobile sitemap has 1,000 URLs of which Google has indexed 74 of them. The pages are crawlable, the site structure is logical. And performing a Landing Page URL search (showing only Google/Organic source/medium) on Google Analytics I can see that hundreds of those mobile URLs are being landed on. A search on mobile for a longtail keyword from a (randomly selected) page shows a result in the SERPs for the mobile page that judging by GSC has not been indexed. Could this be because we have recently added rel=alternate tags on our desktop pages (and of course corresponding canonical ones on mobile). Would Google then 'not index' rel=alternate page versions? Thanks for any input on this one. PmHmG
Technical SEO | | AlisonMills0 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hey Mozzers! I'm battling a few questions about the sitemap for my ecommerce store. Could you help me out? Is it necessary to include your product attributes in the sitemap? I'm not sure why it would matter to have a sitemap that lists everything in the color cherry. Also, if the attributes were included in the sitemap, would that count as duplicate content for the same products to show up in multiple attributes? Is there any benefit to submitting the sitemaps individually? For example, submitting /product-sitemap.xml, /product_brand-sitemap.xml versus just /sitemap.xml? Any other best practices for managing my ecommerce sitemap, or great resources, would be very helpful. Thank you! a1vUz
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
Adding multi-language sitemaps to robots.txt
I am working on a revamped multi-language site that has moved to Magento. Each language runs off the core coding so there are no sub-directories per language. The developer has created sitemaps which have been uploaded to their respective GWT accounts. They have placed the sitemaps in new directories such as: /sitemap/uk/sitemap.xml /sitemap/de/sitemap.xml I want to add the sitemaps to the robots.txt but can't figure out how to do it. Also should they have placed the sitemaps in a single location with the file identifying each language: /sitemap/uk-sitemap.xml /sitemap/de-sitemap.xml What is the cleanest way of handling these sitemaps and can/should I get them on robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
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 -
Is it bad to have same page listed twice in sitemap?
Hello, I have found that from an HTML (not xml) sitemap of a website, a page has been listed twice. Is it okay or will it be considered duplicate content? Both the links use same anchor text, but different urls that redirect to another (final) page. I thought ideal way is to use final page in sitemap (and in all internal linking), not the intermediate pages. Am I right?
Technical SEO | | StickyRiceSEO1 -
Multiple title and description change is considered spam?
I'm changing title and description several times throught 1-2 months... will Google penalize me? I'm worried that testing several title and description ideas would affect the site rankings on google. Anyone had a problem with that... or can i continue testing as many titles and descriptions as i want?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0 -
Best Dynamic Sitemap Generator
Hello Mozers, Could you please share the best Dynamic Sitemap Generator you are using. I have found this place: http://www.seotools.kreationstudio.com/xml-sitemap-generator/free_dynamic_xml_sitemap_generator.php Thanks in advanced for your help.
Technical SEO | | SEOPractices0