Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Xml sitemap advice for website with over 100,000 articles

    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.

    Xml sitemap advice for website with over 100,000 articles

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    3437
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • jarrett.mackay
      jarrett.mackay last edited by

      Hi,

      I have read numerous articles that support submitting multiple XML sitemaps for websites that have thousands of articles... in our case we have over 100,000.  So, I was thinking I should submit one sitemap for each news category.

      My question is how many page levels should each sitemap instruct the spiders to go?  Would it not be enough to just submit the top level URL for each category and then let the spiders follow the rest of the links organically?

      So, if I have 12 categories the total number of URL´s will be 12???

      If this is true, how do you suggest handling or home page, where the latest articles are displayed regardless of their category... so I.E. the spiders will find l links to a given article both on the home page and in the category it belongs to.  We are using canonical tags.

      Thanks,

      Jarrett

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AlanBleiweiss
        AlanBleiweiss @jarrett.mackay last edited by

        It's really a process of experimenting over time to find out the method that results in the most URLs indexed that in turn brings the most relevant traffic.  Personally I wouldn't have one for each category, yet without tests there's no conclusive reasoning either way.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • jarrett.mackay
          jarrett.mackay @AlanBleiweiss last edited by

          Thanks for the tip... I will do that.

          I´m still unsure if I really need to submit a sitemap with thousands of URL´s  I was thinking I should create an sitemap index file the points to individual top level category sitemaps and leave it at that. If I do this though, I suppose I don´t need individual sitemaps per category as I will just insert the category URL´s in the root sitemap.  What do you think?

          AlanBleiweiss 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • AlanBleiweiss
            AlanBleiweiss last edited by

            To add to Corey's response, I'll repeat what I just provided another question here on Pro Q&A.  Sitemap.xml files can handle a maximum of 50,000 URLs, however I've seen them choke with as few as 10,000.  Its important to run them through a tool like tools.pingdom.com to ensure they load within just a couple seconds.

            Then submit them through Google/Bing webmaster systems and then see if they succeed in crawling all of them.

            jarrett.mackay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • CoreyTisdale
              CoreyTisdale last edited by

              We break up our sitemap files into several different site maps, and then use a sitemap index file to make sure Google finds them all.

              At the bottom of this post they talk about using an index file to combine multiple sitemaps, and they also specifically say it is fine to have one time sensitive site map (ie: front page items) and several other less time sensitive ones (categories in your case).

              http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/10/multiple-sitemaps-in-same-directory.html

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • wonkydogadmin

                Pending Sitemaps

                Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin
                0
              • McTaggart

                Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?

                Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
                (a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml 
                http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
                http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml 
                and so on... OR this kind of approach - 
                (b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
                http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and 
                http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                0
              • McTaggart

                Website copying in Tweets from Twitter

                Just noticed a web developer I work with has been copying tweets into the website - and these are displayed (and saved) one page at a time across hundreds of pages (this is so they can populate a twitter feed, I am told). How would you tackle this, now that the deed's been done? This is in Drupal. Your thoughts would be welcome as this is a new one to me. Thanks, Luke

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                0
              • Allie_Williams

                Priority Attribute in XML Sitemaps - Still Valid?

                Is the priority value (scale of 0-1) used for each URL in an XML sitemap still a valid way of communicating to search engines which content you (the webmaster) believe is more important relative to other content on your site? I recall hearing that this was no longer used, but can't find a source. If it is no longer used, what are the easiest ways to communicate our preferences to search engines? Specifically, I'm looking to preference the most version version of a product's documentation (version 9) over the previous version (version 8). Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams
                0
              • DavidC.

                Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?

                I just shut off the All-In-One seo pack plugin for wordpress, and turned on the Yoast plugin. It's great!  So much helpful, seo boosting info! So, in watching a video on how to configure the plugin, it mentions that I should update the sitemap, using the Yoast sitemap I'm afraid to do this, because I'm pretty technologically behind... I see I have a Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold) plugin turned on (and have had it for many years). Should I leave this one on? Or would you recommend going through the steps to use the Yoast plugin sitemap? If so, what are the benefits of the Yoast plugin, over the Google XML? Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.
                0
              • TheHecksler

                Website completely delisted - reasons?

                Hi, I got a request from a potential client as he do not understand why his website cannot be found on Google. I've checked that and found out that the complete website is not listed (complete delist) at all - expect just one pdf file.
                I've checked his robots.txt - but this is ok. I've checked the META Robots - but they are on index,follow ... ok so far. I've checked his backlinks but could not found any massive linking from bad pages - just 6 backlinks and only four of them from designdomains.com which looks like a linklist or so. I've requested access to their GWT account if available in hope to find more infos, but does anyone of you may have a quick idea what els it could be? What could be the issue? I think that they got delisted due to any bad reason ... Let me know your Ideas 🙂 THANX 🙂 Sebi

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheHecksler
                0
              • eugene_bgb

                Hreflang in vs. sitemap?

                Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time.  I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb.  I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter?  GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb
                0
              • mycity4kids

                How important is the optional <priority>tag in an XML sitemap of your website? Can this help search engines understand the hierarchy of a website?</priority>

                Can the <priority>tag be used to tell search engines the hierarchy of a site or should it be used to let search engines know which priority to we want pages to be indexed in?</priority>

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mycity4kids
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.