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.
Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?
-
Hi all
I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it.
The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me!
Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing?
Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site?
Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated.
Kris
-
It would certainly not have any impact on the existing rankings and crawl rate. infact the crawl rate would improve
-
Hi Khem
Yes I fully understood your response, thank you.
We always do sumbit a sitemap file for every site we build however we never really update the sitemap from there on, we tend to leave the search engines to crawl the site in order to find new pages or detect pages that have been removed. I assume this is a normal practice for many other developers out there?
We always do a 301 redirect for pages which have been un-published such as old products and categories.
My main concern was actually creating a new sitemap file every day and if this would have any effect on the existing rankings, or crawl rate of the site. I guess not!
Kris
-
Well to answer you question. Yes, you should always use xml sitemap also submit it with search engines. It helps search engines to access all the pages of your websites. If fact you can even tell search engines about your most important and less important pages.
It also enables you to tell Search Engines about the content update frequency so that search engine could crawl those again which you update daily/ weekly.
Furthermore, there is no problem if you update the XML file daily as long as you're not removing pages. However, if you need to remove pages, keep them in sitemap for at least one week and redirect old pages to new ones.
Hope I was able to understand your question and answered properly
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
-
Automate XML Sitemaps
Quick question, which is the best method that people have for automating sitemaps. We publish around 200 times a day and I would like to make sure as soon as we publish it gets updated in the site map. What is the best method of updating a sitemap so it gets updated immediately after it is published.
Technical SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Good alternatives to Xenu's Link Sleuth and AuditMyPc.com Sitemap Generator
I am working on scraping title tags from websites with 1-5 million pages. Xenu's Link Sleuth seems to be the best option for this, at this point. Sitemap Generator from AuditMyPc.com seems to be working too, but it starts handing up, when a sitemap file, the tools is working on,becomes too large. So basically, the second one looks like it wont be good for websites of this size. I know that Scrapebox can scrape title tags from list of url, but this is not needed, since this comes with both of the above mentioned tools. I know about DeepCrawl.com also, but this one is paid, and it would be very expensive with this amount of pages and websites too (5 million ulrs is $1750 per month, I could get a better deal on multiple websites, but this obvioulsy does not make sense to me, it needs to be free, more or less). Seo Spider from Screaming Frog is not good for large websites. So, in general, what is the best way to work on something like this, also time efficient. Are there any other options for this? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | blrs120 -
Host sitemaps on S3?
Hey guys, I run a dynamic web service and I will start building static sitemaps for it pretty soon. The fact that my app lives in a multitude of servers doesn't make it easy to distribute frequently updated static files throughout the servers. My idea was to host the files in AWS S3 and point my robots.txt sitemap directive there. I'll use a sitemap index so, every other sitemap will be hosted on S3 as well. I could dynamically mirror the content from the files in S3 through my app, but that would be a little more resource intensive than just serving the static files from a common place. Any ideas? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tanlup0 -
Effective use of hReview
Hi fellow Mozzers! I am just in the process of adding various reviews to our site (a design agency), but I wanted to use the ratings in different ways depending on the page. So for the home page and the services (branding, POS, direct mail etc) I wanted to aggregate relevant reviews (giving us an average of all reviews for the home page, an average of ratings from all brand projects and so on). Then, I wanted to put specific reviews on our portfolio pages, so the review relates specifically to that project. This is the easiest to do as the hReview generator is geared up for reviews that come from one source, but I can't find a way of aggregating the star ratings to make an average rating rich snippet. Anyone know where I can get the coding for this? Thanks in advance! Nick.
Technical SEO | | themegroup0 -
Exclude Child URLs from XML Sitemap Generator (Wordpress)
Hi all, I was recommended the XML Sitemap Generator for Wordpress by the very helpful Keith Bloemendaal and John Pring - however I can't seem to exclude child URLs. There is a section Exclude items and a subsection Exclude posts. I have tried inputting the URLs for the pages I don't want in the sitemap, however that didn't work. So I read that you have to include a list of "IDs" - not sure where on earth to find that info, tried the page name and the post= number from the URL, however neither worked. I hope somebody can point me in the right direction - and apologies, I am a Wordpress novice, and I got no answers from the Wordpress forums so turned right back to SEOmoz! Cheers.
Technical SEO | | markadoi840 -
DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO?
DISQUS COMMENTS backlinks-good for seo? YES/NO? I have just started commenting on "powered by disquus" websites in the Disqus comments box and left a link to my website in the name field! Having googled whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good for seo purposes i have discovered that there is a 50/50 view on the subject with some people saying they are a "goldmine" for getting high PR backlinks and others saying they are a waste of time because googlebot cannot read Java. My own experience of commenting on Disqus powered websites is that wordpress blogs powered by disqus comments ARE INDEXED by GOOGLE and the "BACKLINK IS IN THE SOURCE OF THE PAGE" When i comment on normal websites using the Disqus comment system i have found that my Disqus comments ARE NOT indexed by Google and there IS NO BACKLINK in the page source! Has anybody got any views on whether Disqus comments backlinks are any good?
Technical SEO | | Freebetsuk2
