Does Google index XML files?
-
Does Google or other search engines include XML files in their index? More specifically, I am wondering how Google knows the difference between an xml filetype and an RSS feed.
-
Yes, Google indexes XML files. You can try a search using filetype:xml
I am not an expert on RSS files but I believe the XML versions use the <rss>tag. If I were to take a guess, I would say Google can easily examine the file (they read pdf's for example) and determine if it is an RSS feed.</rss>
-
Google and other search engines know about XML files. The reason I don't necessarily say indexed is because you don't see them really popping up on a SERP page. Robots know the difference between a straight xml file and an rss feed because of the technical markup and structure of the actual file.
For example a very common use for Google and xml files is sitemaps, which you can give them the sitemap feed in Webmaster tools so they will know about the file. If you did a search for www.rootdomain.com + sitemap file you would never see an .xml file actually popup. You would need to visit the url directly.
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
-
Set Up htaccess File
Looking for expert help (willing to pay) to set up a proper htaccess file. I'm having an issue as the site has a subdomain at secure.domain.com and has php extensions there. I tried a couple recommended code sets but it seems to be a mess. The site is working properly but this may be causing rankings issues. It's coded in pure HTML and PHP, no Wordpress stuff.
Technical SEO | | execubob
The delete www causes the secure side to fail. The delete html extensions causes the php extensions to fail.0 -
Google has deindexed a page it thinks is set to 'noindex', but is in fact still set to 'index'
A page on our WordPress powered website has had an error message thrown up in GSC to say it is included in the sitemap but set to 'noindex'. The page has also been removed from Google's search results. Page is https://www.onlinemortgageadvisor.co.uk/bad-credit-mortgages/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/ Looking at the page code, plus using Screaming Frog and Ahrefs crawlers, the page is very clearly still set to 'index'. The SEO plugin we use has not been changed to 'noindex' the page. I have asked for it to be reindexed via GSC but I'm concerned why Google thinks this page was asked to be noindexed. Can anyone help with this one? Has anyone seen this before, been hit with this recently, got any advice...?
Technical SEO | | d.bird0 -
Pages are Indexed but not Cached by Google. Why?
Hello, We have magento 2 extensions website mageants.com since 1 years google every 15 days cached my all pages but suddenly last 15 days my websites pages not cached by google showing me 404 error so go search console check error but din't find any error so I have cached manually fetch and render but still most of pages have same 404 error example page : - https://www.mageants.com/free-gift-for-magento-2.html error :- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN803IN804&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.mageants.com%2Ffree-gift-for-magento-2.html&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1569j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 so have any one solutions for this issues
Technical SEO | | vikrantrathore0 -
Accidental No Index
Hi everyone, We control several client sites at my company. The developers accidentally had a no index robot implemented in the site code when we did the HTTPS upgrade without knowing it (yes it's true). Ten days later we noticed traffic was falling. After a couple days we found the no index tags and removed them and resumbitted the sitemaps. The sites started ranking for their own keywords again within a day or two. The organic traffic is still down considerably and other keywords they are not ranking for in the same spot as they were before or at all. If I look in Google Search console, it says we submitted for example 4,000 URLs and only 160 have been indexed. I feel like maybe Google is taking a long time to re-index to remainder of the sites?? Has anyone has this issue?? We're starting to get very concerned so any input would be appreciate. I read an article on here from 2011 about a company that did the same and they were ranking for their keywords within a week. It's been 8 days since our fix.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
URL Indexing with Keyword
Hi, My webpage url is indexed in Google but don't show when searching the Main Keyword. How can i index it with keyword. It should show on any SERP when the keyword is searched. Any suggestions.
Technical SEO | | green.h1 -
New domain's Sitemap.xml file loaded to old domain - how does this effect SEO?
I have a client who recently changed their domain when they redesigned their site. The client wanted the old site to remain live for existing customers with links to the new domain. I guess as a workaround, the developer loaded the new domain's sitemap.xml file to the old domain. What SEO ramifications would this have if any on the primary (new) domain?
Technical SEO | | julesae0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Crawling issues in google
Hi everyone, I think i have crawling issues with one of my sites. It has vanished form Google rankings it used to rank for all services i offered now it doesn't anymore ever since September 29th. I have resubmitted to Google 2 times and they came back with the same answer: " We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the web spam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search. " How i detected that it may be a crawling issue is that 2 weeks ago i changed metas - metas are very slow in getting updated and for some of my pages never did update Do you know any good tools to check for bad code that could slow down the crawling. I really don't know where to look other than issues for crawling. I validated the website with w3c validator and ran xenu and cleaned these up but my website is still down. Any ideas are appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CMTM0