Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should the date be included in news URLs
-
My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news.
We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
Should the date be included in the URL?From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct?
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=11665
-
Not having the numbers would probably be less confusing than having numbers that might later duplicate. If you can produce the news sitemaps (and keep them accurate & up to date) the unique numbers are not technically required for Google news listings. So if they are hard to add and you are confident in your sitemaps it shouldn't be an issue.
If you are less confident in them and being listed on google news is a big deal for you then try to get them added.
-
we may have more than one news item per day but the title would be different....
would you recommend adding these numbers, or no need and might as well leave them off?
-
that number would work fine... as long as you only ever had 1 news item per day.
-
We dont have wordpress so I can't work on the plugins.
Would it make sense to have a 6 digit number with the date, ie for today 072913, or would google not know to interpret that as a date?
-
Yes you should use numbers if you can implement a news site map correctly you will easily be found if you use these numbers. The only way you're going to do this is by using a correct news site map if you're using WordPress and I don't know if you are not I can recommend going to Yoast.com and finding an excellent news site-map
here's what Google has to say about it
Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that starts with 199 or 200, we won't be able to crawl it. Please note that this rule is waived with News sitemaps.
I would strongly suggest using a sitemap_index.xml file
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/74288
I hope I have been of help,
Thomas
-
That is correct. We tend to still use a unique number though - partly as a "belt and braces" approach. The other advantage is that headlines can be updated, keep a headline relevant URL and easily redirect to the correct version.
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
-
Include or exclude noindex urls in sitemap?
We just added tags to our pages with thin content. Should we include or exclude those urls from our sitemap.xml file? I've read conflicting recommendations.
Technical SEO | | vcj0 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
Is it Detrimental to Repeat a Word in Our URL?
Hey guys! We run a tour company in Barcelona. Our company name is Barcelona Experience. We're customizing our URL's to include keywords which can be found in all the important areas on the page (title tage, meta descp., etc).
Technical SEO | | BarcelonaExperience
We want to change "www.barcelonaexperience.com/bike-tours" to "www.barcelonaexperience.com/barcelona-bike-tours"
We're worried the repetition of "barcelona" could be a bad thing. True, or not true? Thanks!0 -
Should all pagination pages be included in sitemaps
How important is it for a sitemap to include all individual urls for the paginated content. Assuming the rel next and prev tags are set up would it be ok to just have the page 1 in the sitemap ?
Technical SEO | | Saijo.George0 -
Spaces (actual spaces) in URL
Hi all, Is there a huge loss of SEO performance if a URL shows spaces with an actual space (i.e. %20) in the URL rather than a "-" (or indeed a "_")? I know the preferred option is to have a "-", but I am just wondering if it is worth our effort to manually change the "%20" to a "-" in all the instances? Thanks 🙂 Diana
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL
For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why? site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t". The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future. My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.
Technical SEO | | PatrickGriffith0 -
Trailing Slashes In Url use Canonical Url or 301 Redirect?
I was thinking of using 301 redirects for trailing slahes to no trailing slashes for my urls. EG: www.url.com/page1/ 301 redirect to www.url.com/page1 Already got a redirect for non-www to www already. Just wondering in my case would it be best to continue using htacces for the trailing slash redirect or just go with Canonical URLs?
Technical SEO | | upick-1623910 -
Include pagination in sitemap.xml?
Curious on peoples thoughts around this. Since restructuring our site we have seen a massive uplift in pages indexed and organic traffic with our pagination. But we haven't yet included a sitemap.xml. It's an ancient site that never had one. Given that Google seems to be loving us right now, do we even need a sitemap.xml - aside from the analytical benefis in WM Tools? Would you include pagination URL's (don't worry, we have no duplicate content) in the sitemap.xml? Cheers.
Technical SEO | | sichristie0