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.
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.
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
-
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
Sudden Indexation of "Index of /wp-content/uploads/"
Hi all, I have suddenly noticed a massive jump in indexed pages. After performing a "site:" search, it was revealed that the sudden jump was due to the indexation of many pages beginning with the serp title "Index of /wp-content/uploads/" for many uploaded pieces of content & plugins. This has appeared approximately one month after switching to https. I have also noticed a decline in Bing rankings. Does anyone know what is causing/how to fix this? To be clear, these pages are **not **normal /wp-content/uploads/ but rather "index of" pages, being included in Google. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
Google not Indexing images on CDN.
My URL is: https://bit.ly/2hWAApQ We have set up a CDN on our own domain: https://bit.ly/2KspW3C We have a main xml sitemap: https://bit.ly/2rd2jEb and https://bit.ly/2JMu7GB is one the sub sitemaps with images listed within. The image sitemap uses the CDN URLs. We verified the CDN subdomain in GWT. The robots.txt does not restrict any of the photos: https://bit.ly/2FAWJjk. Yet, GWT still reports none of our images on the CDN are indexed. I ve followed all the steps and still none of the images are being indexed. My problem seems similar to this ticket https://bit.ly/2FzUnBl but however different because we don't have a separate image sitemap but instead have listed image urls within the sitemaps itself. Can anyone help please? I will promptly respond to any queries. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TNZ
Deepinder0 -
Why is my blog disappearing from Google index?
My Google blogger blog is about 10 months old. In that time i have worked really hard with adding unique content, building relationships with other bloggers in the same niche, and done some inbound marketing. 2 weeks ago I updated the template to something cleaner, with a little more "wordpress" feel to it. This means i've messed about with the code a lot in these weeks, adding social buttons etc. The problem is that from some point late last week thurs/fri my pages started disappearing from Googles index. I have checked webmaster tools and have no manual actions. My link profile is pretty clean as its a new site, and i have manually checked every piece of content published for plagiarism etc. So what is going on? Did i break my blog? Or is something else amiss? Impressions are down 96% comparing Nov 1-5th to previous 5 days. site is here: http://bit.ly/174beVm Thanks for any help in advance.
Technical SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Staging & Development areas should be not indexable (i.e. no followed/no index in meta robots etc)
Hi I take it if theres a staging or development area on a subdomain for a site, who's content is hence usually duplicate then this should not be indexable i.e. (no-indexed & nofollowed in metarobots) ? In order to prevent dupe content probs as well as non project related people seeing work in progress or finding accidentally in search engine listings ? Also if theres no such info in meta robots is there any other way it may have been made non-indexable, or at least dupe content prob removed by canonicalising the page to the equivalent page on the live site ? In the case in question i am finding it listed in serps when i search for the staging/dev area url, so i presume this needs urgent attention ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How to Stop Google from Indexing Old Pages
We moved from a .php site to a java site on April 10th. It's almost 2 months later and Google continues to crawl old pages that no longer exist (225,430 Not Found Errors to be exact). These pages no longer exist on the site and there are no internal or external links pointing to these pages. Google has crawled the site since the go live, but continues to try and crawl these pages. What are my next steps?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Unnecessary pages getting indexed in Google for my blog
I have a blog dapazze.com and I am suffering from a problem for a long time. I found out that Google have indexed hundreds of replytocom links and images attachment pages for my blog. I had to remove these pages manually using the URL removal tool. I had used "Disallow: ?replytocom" in my robots.txt, but Google disobeyed it. After that, I removed the parameter from my blog completely using the SEO by Yoast plugin. But now I see that Google has again started indexing these links even after they are not present in my blog (I use #comment). Google have also indexed many of my admin and plugin pages, whereas they are disallowed in my robots.txt file. Have a look at my robots.txt file here: http://dapazze.com/robots.txt Please help me out to solve this problem permanently?
Technical SEO | | rahulchowdhury0 -
Is Google caching date same as crawling/indexing date?
If a site is cached on say 9 oct 2012 doesn't that also mean that Google crawled it on same date ? And indexed it on same date?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0