SITEMAP - Does <changefreq>and <image:title>have any apreciable effect?</image:title></changefreq>
-
Hi everyone.
It was hard to find some actual evidence that some of the atributes to be declared in a sitemap have some real impact.
Particularly, im interested in these two: <changefreq></changefreq> and**image:title</image:title>**I've used them in a few cases just to check their effect and couldnt see any.
Do you have any experience with these? Or any other atribute that might be helpful, in order to create a more accurate and effective sitemap?Also, this could be a great topic to create a new Moz Blog post, the one about sitemap is 8years old.
-
My sitemap file has them but only because Screaming Frog and WordPress include that information when they generate the sitemap.
Reading the Google forum, there is a reply from John Mueller from 2014 that he specifically says change frequency and priority do not affect ranking of URL's once they are indexed
https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/w9o8bTgqb9c/7hS7hog3ZIYJ
He also states that last mod date is good for Google to know.
We all know that you can take things said by Google with a grain of salt, but this is also an instance where it is specifically stated so I would tend to believe it to be true.
-
Hi Shawn,
Well, i've read those resources. I couldnt find any clue about whether the impact on SERPs or in any case those tags would help.
Have you used them? Do you find them useful?
GR.
PS: thanks for the response -
Those are optional lines in the Sitemap and are handled differently per SE.
Some great resources on best practice:
http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
Reviewing Google's documentation they don't include them, which to me confirms what you've probably seen and that is they don't provide any value. Google's example does use image:captionthough which probably is treated similarly to alt text. </image:caption>
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en#sitemapformat
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
-
Best Sitemap Generator XML
Hello Everyone, Can Anyone Suggest best Site map Generator Software??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ieplnupur0 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
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 -
Help with Effective Meta Description
Can someone give me a sample of an effective meta description tag? All of the best practice stuff I read doesn't talk about how to raise CTR. It seems to me that this is a neglected area of SEO, and we want to do this right. Obviously, we will need to test. For example, my main home page keyword is "IT Support" Things I might want to put in the tag: Free Network Assessments 100% Risk Free Trials "Relentless IT Support" (Major Theme) 30 Years of Experience (since 1984) Eliminate your IT Support Headaches Forever (Too long) Call to action? BTW, Thanks to everyone for your help. This is a great community. Solid advice from experts. Here's an example of what I would create Relentless IT Support Since 1984. Trust and Accountability. 100% Risk Free Trials. Contact us today for Free IT Assessment.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CsmBill0 -
Tool to check XML sitemap
Hello, Can anyone help me finding a tool to have closer look of the XML sitemap? Tks in advance! PP
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PedroM0 -
Sitemap.xml Question
I am pretty new to SEO and I have been creating new pages for our website for niche terms. Should I include ALL pages on our website in the sitemap.xml or should I only have our "main" pages listed on the sitemap.xml file? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | threebiz0 -
Why does google keep shortening my title?
IRS Problems, Tax Problems <cite>www.taxproblem.org/</cite> We are a Local Houston CPA Firm in Harris County Texas, dedicated to helping taxpayers resolve their tax problems. We mean, “actually resolve their IRS ... Checking the source code doesn't reveal any reason I can see why they would do that. It happens most often, if not all the time, and only Google results So if anyone would check the source code of my main page and can see why and what needs to be done, I can fix it. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joemas990 -
Should we block urls like this - domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=ascℴ=price&price=1 within the robots.txt?
I've recently added a campaign within the SEOmoz interface and received an alarming number of errors ~9,000 on our eCommerce website. This site was built in Magento, and we are using search friendly url's however most of our errors were duplicate content / titles due to url's like: domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=1 and domainname/shop/leather-chairs.html?brand=244&cat=16&dir=asc&order=price&price=4. Is this hurting us in the search engines? Is rogerbot too good? What can we do to cut off bots after the ".html?" ? Any help would be much appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280