Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

Your browser does not seem to support JavaScript. As a result, your viewing experience will be diminished, and you have been placed in read-only mode.

Please download a browser that supports JavaScript, or enable it if it's disabled (i.e. NoScript).

.xml sitemap showing in SERP

Technical SEO

675

Kyleroe95 Subscriber last edited by

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.
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 0
Kyleroe95 Subscriber last edited by

Agreed, but had to do my due diligence to ask

Thanks for the feedback!
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 1
Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

You could go that route, but I would honestly ignore it and focus on some other issues ;).
1 Reply Last reply
Reply Quote 2

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.

Start my free trial

Browse Questions

View

From

Sorted by

With category

Explore more categories

Related Questions

Which pages should I index or have in my XML sitemap?

Hi there, my website is ConcertHotels.com - a site which helps users find hotels close to concert venues. I have a hotel listing page for every concert venue on my site - about 12,000 of them I think (and the same for nearby restaurants). e.g. https://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 Each of these pages list the nearby hotels to that concert venue. Users clicking on the individual hotel are brought through to a hotel (product) page e.g. https://www.concerthotels.com/hotel/the-new-yorker-a-wyndham-hotel/136818 I made a decision years ago to noindex all of the /hotel/ pages since they don't have a huge amount of unique content and aren't the pages I'd like my users to land on . The primary pages on my site are the /venue-hotels/ listing pages. I have similar pages for nearby restaurants, so there are approximately 12,000 venue-restaurants pages, again, one listing page for each concert venue. However, while all of these pages are potentially money-earners, in reality, the vast majority of subsequent hotel bookings have come from a fraction of the 12,000 venues. I would say 2000 venues are key money earning pages, a further 6000 have generated income of a low level, and 4000 are yet to generate income. I have a few related questions: Although there is potential for any of these pages to generate revenue, should I be brutal and simply delete a venue if it hasn't generated revenue within a time period, and just accept that, while it "could" be useful, it hasn't proven to be and isn't worth the link equity. Or should I noindex these "poorly performing pages"? Should all 12,000 pages be listed in my XML sitemap? Or simply the ones that are generating revenue, or perhaps just the ones that have generated significant revenue in the past and have proved to be most important to my business? Thanks Mike
Technical SEO | | mjk26

0
Why is "Article 1 - x of y" showing up in this SERP?

Does anybody have an explanation why this is showing up in the SERP? Ju3VYsW.png
Technical SEO | | jmueller

0
Clarification on indexation of XML sitemaps within Webmaster Tools

Hi Mozzers, I have a large service based website, which seems to be losing pages within Google's index. Whilst working on the site, I noticed that there are a number of xml sitemaps for each of the services. So I submitted them to webmaster tools last Friday (14th) and when I left they were "pending". On returning to the office today, they all appear to have been successfully processed on either the 15th or 17th and I can see the following data: 13/08 - Submitted=0 Indexed=0
14/08 - Submitted=606,733 Indexed=122,243
15/08 - Submitted=606,733 Indexed=494,651
16/08 - Submitted=606,733 Indexed=517,527
17/08 - Submitted=606,733 Indexed=517,498 Question 1: The indexed pages on 14th of 122,243 - Is this how many pages were previously indexed? Before Google processed the sitemaps? As they were not marked processed until 15th and 17th? Question 2: The indexed pages are already slipping, I'm working on fixing the site by reducing pages and improving internal structure and content, which I'm hoping will fix the crawling issue. But how often will Google crawl these XML sitemaps? Thanks in advance for any help.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream

0
Yahoo Local SERPs Index Issue

I recently updated all my website page Titles and was checking to see how many have been crawled so far. On Yahoo/Bing I noticed something very strange when entering site:bandpages.ie in the search field. Selection Buttons (top of SERPs): 'Web' search shows all my pages indexed 'UK' has has most pages 'Only In Ireland' has just 1 page indexed - which is the site RSS Feed and nothing else! The site has been live for 2 years now. Considering we don't trade with the UK and our main focus is here in Ireland - what is going wrong? Why doesn't Yahoo/Bing index list the site pages in the Ireland index? Any insights or solutions appreciated...
Technical SEO | | Ubique

0
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 | | threebiz

0
Do we need to manually submit a sitemap every time, or can we host it on our site as /sitemap and Google will see & crawl it?

I realized we don't have a sitemap in place, so we're going to get one built. Once we do, I'll submit it manually to Google via Webmaster tools. However, we have a very dynamic site with content constantly being added. Will I need to keep manually re-submitting the sitemap to Google? Or could we have the continually updating sitemap live on our site at /sitemap and the crawlers will just pick it up from there? I noticed this is what SEOmoz does at http://www.seomoz.org/sitemap.
Technical SEO | | askotzko

0
Problem With Video Sitemap Becuase All Videos Are in he Same URL

Hi, I created a video sitemap and now I'm getting an error on webmaster tools because the location for some of the videos is the same. It says: Duplicate URL - This URL is a duplicate of another URL in the sitemap. Please remove it and resubmit. What can I do if all my videos are located in the same URL?? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tug-Agency

0
No Sub-Categories in XML Sitemap

I have a couple of sites using 3dcart, the ecommerce platform. Their tech support recently told me that they do not list sub-categories in the XML sitemap, only products and top-tier categories. Am I the only one that sees a problem with this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | poolguy

0