Question about construction of our sitemap URL in robots.txt file
-
Hi all,
This is a Webmaster/SEO question. This is the sitemap URL currently in our robots.txt file:
http://www.ccisolutions.com/sitemap.xml
As you can see it leads to a page with two URLs on it. Is this a problem? Wouldn't it be better to list both of those XML files as separate line items in the robots.txt file?
Thanks!
Dana
-
Hi Jarno,
Thanks so very much! I have to say I am really liking the A1 generator. How awesome of you to follow up. I really appreciate that. Yes, if you want to send me the complete sitemap via PM that would be awesome. I certainly hope I can return the favor
Happy Holidays!
Dana
-
Yes, we definitely use XENU, but I think I like Screaming Frog a bit better (although our IT Director swears it's broken).
-
Hi Christopher,
Thanks for the update. Yes, I looked at it too and other than it not being "pretty" XML, the data seemed to be okay. The one thing the A! generator did that we couldn't do was assign the values for importance and frequency specific pages are modified. If that data is accurate, that's pretty cool. I'm just not sure, although it seems it did identify pages that are modified more frequently correctly. I have 30 days to play with the free trial, but so far I think I like it a lot.
Dana
-
Dana,
It just finished scanning here are the results:
Internal Sitemap URL's:
- Listed found: 5248
- Listed deduced: 5301
- Analyzed content: 3110
- Analyzed references: 3176
External URL's:
- Listed found: 700
When i look at the overview of the result i see a number of 301 redirects, canonical redirects (when tested again the get code 200 OK). But I see a lot op pages.
When i build the sitemap it generates one file (no idea why not more then one) with all the links in the document. Google's sitemap protocol states it should be like the schema at sitemaps.org which it does. The entire protocol of sitemap.org states that a sitemap can not hold over 50,000 links and should be smaller then 10 MB in filesize.
The one I just build for you is only 1 MB and contains less url's then 50,000 and thus is it allowed by Google.
http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html
I can send you the entire version of the sitemap if you'd like in a personal message or through e-mail?
Hope this helps you further.
kind regards
Jarno
-
i started the scan and it's still busy:
2500 analyzed references so far.
Let you know how it turns out.
Jarno
-
Thanks Jarno. I really appreciate that. Yes, I had it selected to just scan for images (as prompted when I attempted to create an image sitemap). Let me know what you see? I am wondering if it is going around in circles?
Dana
-
Dana,
sometimes that happens. Are you scanning for images or are you scanning the site?
i will check your site tomorrow with my full version and see what it does.
Sometimes with some websites you'll get things like this but it can be loads of things. 3500 pages should not take 2 hours but only a couple of minutes. I'll check it first thing tomorrow. A1 is not installed on my laptop..
Let you know tomorrow.
Kind regards
Jarno
-
A1 Sitemap does 2 things:
1 ) It builds a file names sitemap.xml which contains all files on the website (not conform the google requirements
-
It builds a number of files listed in sitemap-index.xml for every 100 pages in one sitemap. So if you're website contains 2800 pages You'll get loads of files: 28 sitemap-1.xml etc and 1 sitemap-index.xml file. Which does meet the Google standards. Afterwards you can do 2 things in Google webmasters:
-
enter the sitemap-index.xml file as a sitemap -> Google will follow everything and come to the grand total of 2800 pages.
-
Enter each sitemap separately.-> same result but you can pinpoint better where you have a 100 pages and google only indexes fewer (can happen).
Hope this helps
-
-
Hi again Jarno,
Is it normal for A1's sitemap generator's "Scan website" function for images to take over two hours? Our site is about 3,500 URLs. So far it has under "Internal 'sitemap' URLs" Listed found: 82076 (and climbing every few seconds).
I am wondering if there isn't something wrong? (I don't have any frame of reference since I've never used it before). Thanks!
Dana
-
I'm not familiar with the A1 Sitemap generator, but regarding the sitemap protocol, there is a limit on the size of a single sitemap.xml file, so for large sites, the sitemap must be split into multiple sitemap.xml files. And, the protocol has a method for indexing these multiple sitemap.xml files. It's sort of like an index to an index. None of my sites exceed the sitemap file limit, so I don't know which sitemap generators use this approach, but I would guess many of them do.
Sitemap generators I have used include DMXZone which is a Dreamweaver plugin, and xml-sitemaps.com which includes a video sitemap generator.
Best,
ChristopherEDIT: PS: Your current sitemap looks fine to me.
-
Thanks Christopher,
Your answer took a noment to sink in, but I think I get it (I think I am coffee deprived this morning).
So, if I am using the A1 Sitemap generator that Jarno suggested, this sitemap index should automatically be generated based on the size of my generated sitemap. Is that correct?
-
Thanks Jarno,
I have downloaded and am trying the 30-day free trial of the A1 Sitemap Generator right now. Thanks for the tip. Can you comment on Christopher's remark below concerning sitemap indexes for larger sitemaps?
Can either you or Christopher give me more clarification on that. Is this what our IT director has attempted to do with the sitemap in our robots.txt file? If so, has it been done correctly?
Thanks!
-
There is a limit on the size of a sitemap and to allow for large sitemaps to be split into smaller sitemaps, the sitemap protocol includes a sitemapindex. See "Using Sitemap index files (to group multiple sitemap files)" here http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html. Of course, it's also possible to include the multiple sitemaps in the robot.txt file, but automated sitemap generators will likely use the sitemapindex feature so that the robots.txt file does not have to be modified as the size of the site changes.
Best,
Christopher -
Another tool to help generate a sitemap and even check broken links is called Xenu (weird logo, but good free product).
-
Dana,
the buildup of your sitemap.xml is very strange to me. I use an external program to build my sitemap.xml for me entire website.
You now have a link in your robots.txt file pointing to a sitemap which contains 2 files (both .xml) with een map of the site?
Why not use a program (free or paid like Microsys A1 (the one I use)) to build 1 sitemap.xml en point to this file from your robots.txt?
hope this helps
if you do have any questions, please let me know.
kind regards
Jarno
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
-
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
Best use of robots.txt for "garbage" links from Joomla!
I recently started out on Seomoz and is trying to make some cleanup according to the campaign report i received. One of my biggest gripes is the point of "Dublicate Page Content". Right now im having over 200 pages with dublicate page content. Now.. This is triggerede because Seomoz have snagged up auto generated links from my site. My site has a "send to freind" feature, and every time someone wants to send a article or a product to a friend via email a pop-up appears. Now it seems like the pop-up pages has been snagged by the seomoz spider,however these pages is something i would never want to index in Google. So i just want to get rid of them. Now to my question I guess the best solution is to make a general rule via robots.txt, so that these pages is not indexed and considered by google at all. But, how do i do this? what should my syntax be? A lof of the links looks like this, but has different id numbers according to the product that is being send: http://mywebshop.dk/index.php?option=com_redshop&view=send_friend&pid=39&tmpl=component&Itemid=167 I guess i need a rule that grabs the following and makes google ignore links that contains this: view=send_friend
Technical SEO | | teleman0 -
Do i have my robots.txt file set up properly
Hi, just doing some seo on my site and i am not sure if i have my robots file set correctly. i use joomla and my website is www.in2town.co.uk. here is my robots file, does this look correct to you User-agent: *
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /xmlrpc/ many thanks1 -
Long URL
I am using seomoz software as a trial, it has crawled my site and a report is telling me that the URL for my forum is to long: <dl> <dt>Title</dt> <dd>Healthy Living Community</dd> <dt>Meta Description</dt> <dd>Healthy life discussion forum chatting about all aspects of healthy living including nutrition, fitness, motivation and much more.</dd> <dt>Meta Robots</dt> <dd>noodp, noydir</dd> <dt>Meta Refresh</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dd> 1 Warning Long URL (> 115 characters) Found about 17 hours ago <dl> <dt>Number of characters</dt> <dd>135 (over by 21)</dd> <dt>Description</dt> <dd>A good URL is descriptive and concise. Although not a high priority, we recommend a URL that is shorter than 75 characters.</dd> </dl> </dd> <dd> URL: http://www.goodhealthword.com/forum/reprogramming-health/welcome-to-the-forum-for-discussing-the-4-steps-for-reprogramming-ones-health/ The problem is when I check the page via edit or in the admin section of wordpress, the url is a s follows: http://www.goodhealthword.com/forum/ My question is where is I cannot see where this long url is located, it appears to be a valid page but I cant find it. Thanks Pete </dd> </dl>
Technical SEO | | petemarko0 -
Xml Sitemap
Hi mozzers, I am about to submit a sitemap for one of my clients via webmaster tools. The issue is that I have way too many urls that I don't want them to be indexed by Google such as testing pages, auto generated pages... Is there way to remove certain URL from the XML sitemap or is this impossible? If impossible, is the only way to control these urls is to "No index" all these pages that i don't want the search engine to see? Thanks Mozzers,
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Same URL in "Duplicate Content" and "Blocked by robots.txt"?
How can the same URL show up in Seomoz Crawl Diagnostics "Most common errors and warnings" in both the "Duplicate Content"-list and the "Blocked by robots.txt"-list? Shouldnt the latter exclude it from the first list?
Technical SEO | | alsvik0 -
Robots.txt and canonical tag
In the SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/robot-access-indexation-restriction-techniques-avoiding-conflicts, it's being said - If you have a robots.txt disallow in place for a page, the canonical tag will never be seen. Does it so happen that if a page is disallowed by robots.txt, spiders DO NOT read the html code ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Robots.txt file question? NEver seen this command before
Hey Everyone! Perhaps someone can help me. I came across this command in the robots.txt file of our Canadian corporate domain. I looked around online but can't seem to find a definitive answer (slightly relevant). the command line is as follows: Disallow: /*?* I'm guessing this might have something to do with blocking php string searches on the site?. It might also have something to do with blocking sub-domains, but the "?" mark puzzles me 😞 Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Rob
Technical SEO | | RobMay0