Should our social network put all of our member profiles in the site map?
-
We're working on some changes to our site and want to add a site map file to give some hints to search engines on our member profiles. Our site has millions of member profiles. I want to ensure that Google indexes them.
Is there a benefit to submitting millions of profiles across multiple site maps?
Is it better to pick a sample of those and submit them? Most member profiles have links to other member profiles.
Is there any benefit to taking a single site map of 50k links and then changing it at some frequency so that all of the member profiles are eventually indexed?
Thanks.
-
This was the approach we were considering. However, what gave me pause was looking at other social networks are doing.
- LinkedIn only has 50k profiles.
- Meez has multiple index files and looks like they are indexing many of their profiles
- Facebook and MySpace don't appear to use Sitemaps (although they do have a crawlable member directory)
- WeeWorld has 500 links
The point is there doesn't seem to be any consistency.
If we end up creating a human readable directory ala Facebook does that achieve the same thing?
-
Totally agree with mike and john.
-
I would definitely do this. Since you have so many profiles, you'll want to have one main sitemaps linking to smaller sitemaps with the profile URLs. One of the sites I work on has several million activities created by users that we put into sitemaps. We automatically generate our sitemaps files frequently and add the new activities created. We include a last modified date for each activity as well so the search bot will know if anything has changed since the last time it's indexed it.
I would create a sitemap system where all of your profiles could be found, and by including the last modified date, you can leave it up to the searchbot as to whether or not a profile has been updated and needs to be re-indexed. There are a couple other properties you could use listed on http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php as well.
-
Yes, we have the concept of public / private profiles. Private profiles aren't included in the index.
-
Benefiting or not, make sure users have the ability to turn this off to avoid privacy problems.
It might create a mess though if they link back and forth.
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
-
Does sending ecom traffic away from a site impact rankings?
I have a client that represents a few big brands but doesn't offer ecommerce capability onsite, they essentially send traffic to retailers and distributors that do sell their products online - they even point to an amazon store that they own. My question is, if they did offer ecom and the conversions took place on their site, rather than direct traffic away from them, would this impact on their rankings at all?
On-Page Optimization | | Algorhythm_jT0 -
On site issues after Magento 2 launch
We did a new site launch on Feb 7th this year - www.vesternet.com It changed from Magento 1 to Magento 2. We had some launch issues around SEO but now we've solved most every crawler issue in Moz reporting - according to Moz we're in better shape on-site than ever. But our organic search is just dropping daily - we expected a drop after launch then back to normal, but over 2 months on something just isn't right. A good example, on Google UK for keyword 'home automation' we've always been about position 10, but now we're out the top 50... Forget about off site for now - what's wrong with our site itself to have caused this? Can anyone help with insights please as this is killing our sales
On-Page Optimization | | dbsmtec1 -
Google is putting brandname: in title tag
Hello, I was wondering why this is happening? In html for example the title tag is something like this: keyword 1 | keyword 2 | Brand name. Title is 67 characters.. When I search in google, I see the site but it shows brandname: keyword 1 | keyword 2 Is this bad? does this mean that google doesn't like the title tag that is in the html? I tried looking it up on google, but they were outdated and I honestly didn't really see an answer to what it means when this happens. Does the brandname: affect rankings?? Have any of you dealt with this, or noticed this?
On-Page Optimization | | donnieath0 -
My site's articles seem to never show up in Google.
This is in regards to a previous post that was answered for me:
On-Page Optimization | | Ctrl-Alt-Success
http://moz.com/community/q/my-site-s-name-not-ranking-in-google I was talking to a friend and he suggested I try to type in an article in google with the exact name followed by my site's domain name without the .com For example, I have an article entitled: "MULTITASKING IS BAD FOR YOU, MKAY?" Obviously it's a title most would not word in that way. I typed it in and followed it up with my site's domain minus .com. So "MULTITASKING IS BAD FOR YOU, MKAY? ctrl-alt-success" But I'm not even getting listed in the search. There's got to be something I'm missing. I understand backlinks are important for ranking, but when I'm trying to find an exact match along with my site's url minus the .com? I just have this strong hunch that something is awry. NOTE: It seems this is only with google. If I use Bing or Yahoo, it comes up just fine.0 -
Does this site have a duplicate content issue?
Google WMT is showing me only 2 short meta descriptions under "HTML Improvements" but I believe http://www.customgia.com may have a content duplication issue. Numerous keywords are used repeatedly across many product descriptions. To make matters worse, every product page has a "Design It!" button that sends the user to a flash-based jewelry designer in which they can edit the product's appearance. I'm not sure if these "designer pages" are adding unnecessary and potentially damaging duplicate content but it's certainly a possibility. There are many items on this site that are similar to one another but not the same. The product description tend to use the same phrases over and over again - words like crystal, Swarovski, beaded, design it, customize, change, pearl, glass beads, iridescent, pearl, drop earrings are used a lot. What I'm stuck on is whether or not I should be focusing on a content duplication issue as the primary SEO problem or if there is something bigger. Thank you for any assistance you can provide!
On-Page Optimization | | rja2140 -
Content for ecommerce site
How important on site/page contents are for ecommerce site. Keeping in mind the page layout. Its not that important to have page copy/content at all for ecommerce sites If yes, does position of content is an important factor? if putting page copy/content in upper fold of a page then the most important thing which is product itself will have less exposure if putting near the footer of the page, does that seem like doing just for the sake of SEs and ranking. How important internal linking form that content would be compare to left panel links or links at the header of a website Thanks Rick
On-Page Optimization | | RickGa0 -
Should we create separate product descriptions for our customers' web sites?
Still got my SEO learner plates on, but I'm trying to help a small e-commerce site which makes and sells baby products . They have upwards of 150 independent retailers also selling their products. Mindful of the fact that many of these retailers are copying the same product descriptions to use on their own web sites, I wondered if there was any value in creating separate sets of product descriptions, one for our web site and one for all their trade customers, in order to minimise the amount of duplicated content devaluing our site. In theory Google ought to know that ours is the original source of the content, but some testing has shown customers ranking higher for the same product descriptions. We have a separate area on the site for trade, which contains lots of media information they can use, and we could include a set of product descriptions in this area for trade customers to download, keeping a unique set of product descriptions for ourselves. We won't stop duplicate content entirely, I realise - but do you think it's worth the effort of trying to implement? Our web developer thinks it's a total waste of time and not worth bothering with for the miniscule benefit he thinks we'll gain. Grateful for any pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | Mandy_Cochrane0 -
Webmaster tools Site speed?
Google webmaster tools site performance is reading out at 2.8 and still raising (Going further into the slow pale area) this was in the green fast area for a while until now. Is this something to be worried about?
On-Page Optimization | | BobAnderson0