Omitting URLs from XML Sitemap - Bad??
-
Hi all,
We are working on an extremely large retail site with some major duplicate content issues that we are in the process of remedying. The site also does not currently have an XML sitemap.
Would it be advisable to create a small XML sitemap with only the main category pages for the time being, and then after our duplicate content issues are resolved, uploading the complete sitemap? Or should we wait to upload anything until all work is complete down to the product page level and canonicals are in place? Will uploading a incomplete sitemap be fraudulent or misleading in the eyes of the search engines and prompt a penalty, or would having at least the main pages mapped while we continue work be okay?
Please let me know if more info is needed to answer! Thanks in advance!
-
Some good answers here, so I'll just throw in my own 2 cents.
The purpose of a sitemap is to help search engines find pages they might not otherwise find during a regular crawl. Sometimes sitemaps can help pages get indexed faster. Other sitemaps serve special purposes, such as News or Video sitemaps, which can add extra information and help ranking particular types of content.
In reality, many, many sitemaps are incomplete, missing, or flat out wrong. To my knowledge, no search engine will penalize you for this, as they would be penalizing half the web.
The danger of an inaccurate sitemap is that the search engines may chose to ignore it completely. Daune Forrester of Bing has stated that if they find a 1% error rate in your sitemap file, then they will disregard the file. However, no such action is known to exist for incomplete sitemaps.
So I'd say there is little in submitting a sitemap of your truly important page. Unfortunately, this won't stop Google from discovering or crawling your duplicate content issues.
The faster you get these fixed, the better.
-
Hi Thomas,
Definitely comforting to hear that you ran your site with an incomplete sitemap without seeing any negative results. Like I said in my response above, I think we will proceed with the partial sitemap, just to have one on there, and then upload a complete one once we can clean up the site a little more. Thanks for your insights - they were very helpful!
-
Hi Saijo,
Thanks for your recommendations! We do want to place a little more emphasis on our top level and main navigation pages, so I think we will probably proceed with a preliminary sitemap with just those pages for now. Once we get to that point, we'll definitely be needing to use multiple sitemaps and an index - thanks for pointing this out!
-
I ran my site with an incomplete site map for years and didn't seem to have a negative effect. I feel that any site map is better than no sitemap. Sitemaps are such a small part of the SEO equation. What they are most useful for is telling Google what to crawl. Beyond that, I don't believe they have much relevance in passing authority.
-
My Theory On this ( I have no tests to prove this )
If you upload a verified site map thats is essentially telling Google these are the important pages on my site. would you want to risk the importance of the other pages by telling Google you consider only the few important categories as the important ones . They wont drop the other pages completely but MIGHT see them as less important .
I really don't see Google penalizing a site for incomplete sitemaps.
If you have a really large site you might also want to look in to multiple sitemaps : http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.au/2006/10/multiple-sitemaps-in-same-directory.html
You might also want to look in to the best situations to use rel canonical vs a 301 redirect .
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
-
Broken URL Links
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding broken URL links on my website. Late last year I move my site from an old platform to Shopify, and now have broken URL links giving out 4xx errors. When I look at Moz Pro>Campaigns>Insights>links, I can see the top broken URL links, however there is a difference if copy & paste URL directly from Moz Pro and by Export CSV file. For example below, If I copy and paste links direct from Moz Pro, it has the “http://” in front as below: http://www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg But when I export the list of links as an CSV file, the http:// is removed. www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg Another Example below: By copy & paste URL direct from Moz Pro
Technical SEO | | johnwall
http://thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue By export CSV file.
thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue Which one do I use to enter into the “Redirect From” field in Shopify URL Redirects? Do I need to have the http:// in front of the URL? Or is it not required for redirects to work? Kind Regards, John Wall
The Hair Hub0 -
Sitemap.xml strategy for site with thousands of pages
I have a client that has a HUGE website with thousands of product pages. We don't currently have a sitemap.xml because it would take so much power to map the sitemap. I have thought about creating a sitemap for the key pages on the website - but didn't want to hurt the SEO on the thousands of product pages. If you have a sitemap.xml that only has some of the pages on your site - will it negatively impact the other pages, that Google has indexed - but are not listed on the sitemap.xml.
Technical SEO | | jerrico10 -
Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!
Hi Everyone, I a currently migrating a Magento site over to Shopify Plus and have a question about best practices for using the canonical URL. There is a competitor that I believe is not doing it the correct way, so I want to make sure my way is the better choice. With 'Vendor Pages' in Shopify, they show up looking like: https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor. Not as clean. Problem is that Shopify also creates https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor. Same products, same page, just a different more clean URL. I am seeing both indexed in Google. What I want to do is basically create a canonical URL from the URL with the parameter that points to the clean URL. The two pages are very similar. The only difference is that the clean URL page has some additional content at the top of the page. I would say the two pages are 90% the same. Do you see any issue with that?
Technical SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Sitemap.xml Site multilang
HI all, I have some questions about multilang sitemap.xml. So, we use the same domain subdirectories with gTLDs example.com/pt-br/
Technical SEO | | mobic
example.com/us/
example.com/es/ How should I do the sitemap.xml in this case? I thought of three alternatives: Should I do a sitemap_index.xml to each lang and make categories for these sitemaps? Examples:
http://www.example.com/pt-br/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/en/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/es/sitemap_index.xml Should I do only one sitemap_index.xml covering all categories of all languages ? Examples:
http://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
http://www.example.com/pt-br/sitemap_categorias_1.xml
http://www.example.com/es/sitemap_categorias_1.xml
http://www.example.com/us/sitemap_categorias_1.xml Should I do a sitemap setting all multilang? <url><loc>http://www.example.com/us/</loc>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="http://www.example.com/pt-br/"
/>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="us"
href="http://www.example.com/us/"
/>
<xhtml:link <br="">rel="alternate"
hreflang="pt-br"
href="http://www.example.com/pt-br/"
/></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></xhtml:link></url> Thanks for any advice.0 -
Changing URLs for SEO
Hi, Currently we have a page, /business, but we have shifted our strategy to optimize for this page for the keyword "enterprise" instead of "business". The page authority of this page is 18 and our domain authority is 35. I've already updated content and title tags to more of an enterprise focus. Would it be wise to move the page to /enterprise and create a 301 redirect from /business to /enterprise? Or is this too risky from an SEO standpoint? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Sitemap issue
How can I create XML as well as HTML sitemaps for my website (both eCommerce and non - eCommerce )Is there any script or tool that helps me making perfect sitemapPlease suggest
Technical SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Removed URLs
Hi all, We have recently removed 200+ articles from our blog. However, those links are still being shown on Google weeks after their removal. In there a way to speed up the process? What effect will this have on our SEO ranking?
Technical SEO | | businessowner0 -
When is the best time to submit a sitemap?
What changes to a website constitute resubmitting a sitemap? For example, if I add new in-site links, should I then resubmit? Or is it more for changes to URLs, Page titles, etc?
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0