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 .
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
-
Indexed, not submitted in sitemap
I have this problem for the site's blog
Technical SEO | | seomozplan196
There is no problem when I check the yoast plugin setting , but some of my blog content is not on the map site but indexed. Did you have such a problem? What is the cause? my website name is missomister1 -
Despite proper hreflang and lang attribute implementation using xml sitemaps, I'm seeing sitelinks from different countries. Any help please?
When someone searches for our brand in US, instead of only US links, users are served with canadian or iranian sitelinks. Despite we have properly implemented xml sitemaps with hreflangs, even we have implemented lang attribute in the head section of source code for every country. I'd be thankful for any advice.
Technical SEO | | eset0 -
URL Redirect
Hi All, So we have employees who can own their own domains for business, however, one employee has a domain that links back to our main site, but when it does, the URL and Page title of our main site, still say his own domain. IE: www.johndoe.com links to www.mysite.com except the url and itle still say www.johndoe.com What are the implications of this? Thank you
Technical SEO | | PeteEllard0 -
URL Question: Is there any value for ecomm sites in having a reverse "breadcrumb" in the URL?
Wondering if there is any value for e-comm sites to feature a reverse breadcrumb like structure in the URL? For example: Example: https://www.grainger.com/category/anchor-bolts/anchors/fasteners/ecatalog/N-8j5?ssf=3&ssf=3 where we have a reverse categorization happening? with /level2-sub-cat/level1-sub-cat/category in the reverse order as to the actual location on the site. Category: Fasteners
Technical SEO | | ROI_DNA
Sub-Cat (level 1): Anchors
Sub-Cat (level 2): Anchor Bolts0 -
How do I deindex url parameters
Google indexed a bunch of our URL parameters. I'm worried about duplicate content. I used the URL parameter tool in webmaster to set it so future parameters don't get indexed. What can I do to remove the ones that have already been indexed? For example, Site.com/products and site.com/products?campaign=email have both been indexed as separate pages even though they are the same page. If I use a no index I'm worried about de indexing the product page. What can I do to just deindexed the URL parameter version? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
Add selective URLs to an XML Sitemap
Hi! Our website has a very large no of pages. I am looking to create an XML Sitemap that contains only the most important pages (category pages etc). However, on crawling the website in a tool like Xenu (the others have a 500 page limit), I am unable to control which pages get added to the XML Sitemap, and which ones get excluded. Essentially, I only want pages that are upto 4 clicks away from my homepage to show up in the XML Sitemap. How should I create an XML sitemap, and at the same time control which pages of my site I add to it (category pages), and which ones I remove (product pages etc). Thanks in advance! Apurv
Technical SEO | | AB_Newbie0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0 -
Sitemap question
My sitemap includes www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html, they are both the same page, will this have any negative effects, or can I remove the www.example.com/index.html?
Technical SEO | | Aftermath_SEO0