Google indexing less url's then containded in my sitemap.xml
-
My sitemap.xml contains 3821 urls but Google (webmaster tools) indexes only 1544 urls. What may be the cause? There is no technical problem. Why does Google index less URLs then contained in my sitemap.xml?
-
Thank you for helping
-
Unless you have a SEO actively reviewing your site, it is quite normal for Google to index less pages then are offered in your sitemap.
How exactly was your sitemap created? Did you go by hand through your site's 3281 pages and add them to a sitemap? Or more likely, did you use a tool to create the sitemap? If you used a tool, how much knowledge do you have regarding how this tool works or its settings?
Just a few examples of URLs which may be included in your sitemap that Google would likely not index:
-
Your home page and other pages may have multiple URLs which lead to the same page. For example: www.mysite.com and www.mysite.com/index.html may be two URLs for the same page. Google will likely only index one of them.
-
You may have links to various URLs which contain parameters which Google will reduce to a single URL. For example: www.mysite.com/product_id=308&sort=asc&color=black, and another URL www.mysite.com/product_id=308&sort=desc&color=black. Both URLs lead to the same content sorted differently.
-
You may have duplicate content on your site. For example, you can sell chairs and list the same chair under multiple paths such as /furniture/wood/chair123 and /furniture/dining-room/chair123. Google will recognize these two pages are the same content presented under multiple URLs.
-
You may have submitted pages to your sitemap which are blocked via robots.txt or the "noindex" tag or are canonicalized to another page.
In order to better understand the root issue you need to examine a list of all URLs in your sitemap and compare that to a list of all indexed URLs. Determine which URLs Google has not indexed and research the reason for each one independently.
-
-
Are they index worthy?
Having them on your sitemap does not mean google wants them in its index
-
He just said it. Is this a new domain? Im in the same boat as you for some of my domains.
-
Yes, I understand this. But In this situation Google first indexes all the URL's within my sitemap.xml uploaded in Google Webmaster tools. Now Google indexes less URL's, only 50%. What can be the cause if there are no technical problems?
-
Hi!
Google will only spend 'so much time' on any new domain. The more traffic and links and page authority you get, the more time Google will dedicate to crawling your website. You should also make sure that the site is not slow, as this will reduce the crawling speed even more! See Google page speed for tips on speeding up the load time of your site
Good Luck,
Sven Witteveen
Expand Online
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
-
URL with query string being indexed over it's parent page?
I noticed earlier this week that this page - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/bomb-threats-and-suspicious-packages?channel=care was being indexed instead of this page - https://www.ihasco.co.uk/courses/detail/bomb-threats-and-suspicious-packages for its various keywords We have rel=canonical tags correctly set up and all internal links to these pages with query strings are nofollow, so why is this page being indexed? Any help would be appreciated 🙂
Technical SEO | | iHasco0 -
How to know how much pages are indexed on Google?
I have a big site, there are a way to know what page are not indexed? I know that you can use site: but with a big site is a mess to check page by page. This is a tool or a system to check a entire site and automatically find non-indexed pages?
Technical SEO | | markovald0 -
Sitemap indexation
3 days ago I sent in a new sitemap for a new platform. Its 23.412 pages but until now its only 4 pages (!!) that are indexed according to the Webmaster Tools. Why so few? Our stage-enviroment got indexed (more than 50K pages) in a few days by a mistake.
Technical SEO | | Morten_Hjort0 -
Image Indexing Issue by Google
Hello All,My URL is: www.thesalebox.comI have Submitted my image Sitemap in google webmaster tool on 10th Oct 2013,Still google could not indexing any of my web images,Please refer my sitemap - www.thesalebox.com/AppliancesHomeEntertainment.xml and www.thesalebox.com/Hardware.xmland my webmaster status and image indexing status are below, Can you please help me, why my images are not indexing in google yet? is there any issue? please give me suggestions?Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Unused url 'A' contains frameset - can it damage the other site B?
Client has an old unused site 'A' which I've discovered during my backlink research. It contains this source code below which frames the client's 'proper' site B inside the old unused url A in the browser address. Quick question - will google penalise the website B which is the one I'm optimising? Should the client be using a redirect instead? <frameset <span class="webkit-html-attribute-name">border='0' frameborder='0' framespacing='0'></frameset <span> <frame src="http: www.clientwebsite.co.ukb" frameborder="0" noresize="noresize" scrolling="yes"></frame src="http:> Please go to http://www.clientwebsite.co.ukB <noframes></noframes> Thanks, Lu.
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
How should i knows google to indexed my new pages ?
I have added many products in my ecommerce site but most of the google still not indexed yet. I already submitted sitemap a month ago but indexed process was very slow. Is there anyway to know the google to indexed my products or pages immediately. I can do ping but always doing ping is not the good idea. Any more suggestions ?
Technical SEO | | chandubaba1 -
For Google + purposes, should the author's name appear in the Meta description or title tag of my web site just as you would your key search phrase?
Relative to Cyrus Shepard's article on January 4th regarding Google's Superior SEO strategy, if I'm the primary author of all blog articles and web site content, and I have a link showing authorship going back to Google Plus, is a site wide link from the home page enough or should that show up on all blog posts etc and editorial comment pages etc? Conversely, should the author's name appear in the Meta description or title tag of my web site just as you would your key search phrase since Google appears to be trying to make a solid connection with my name, and all content?
Technical SEO | | lwnickens0 -
Is having a sitemap.xml file still beneficial?
Hi, I'm pretty new to SEO and something I've noticed is that a lot of things become relevant and irrelevant like the weather. I was just wondering if having a sitemap.xml file for Google's use is still a good idea and beneficial? Logically thinking, my websites would get crawled faster by having one. Cheers.
Technical SEO | | davieshussein0