XML Sitemaps

[Steve G Griggs]

XML Sitemaps.

Hi John.

Well done on bringing this up, I have never got too involved with sitemaps, but I probably will have to soon, but that is scary how it affects a webiste so quickly.
Definitely one to beware of.

[john@stinkyink.]

Hi Steve,

I think once your understand how Google sees the information then you can use it to your benefit, we were just uploading a site map without any thought to what it has the potential to do!!

[gabrielcrowe]

With information from this page in mind, I'm creating (well, already created) a php script for ActSQL, that generates perfect sitemaps, including the priority.

Without any priority data, and a lack of manual input, i opted to generate them based on the structure of the catalog.

The code walks back through the sections to count the depth from the root. this number is then used to determine the priority, with a special override, for products pages.

With this is mind, we can configure the sections to different priorities.

regardless of the depth, what is the rough guide to those people who have sites with differing structures. Yours at stinkyink is differnt from a few others, and not everyone has all major sections leading to a tree of brands, then printers then inks.

are products more important? are the major sections? or is it more down to whatever gets the most hits in your stats?

[malbro]

are products more important? are the major sections? or is it more down to whatever gets the most hits in your stats?

I suspect you will get some very different answers to this but my answer is that products are much more important than sections.

[john@stinkyink.]

Hah, you say that, but we use the final section as our printer page and products are much less important for us because we are optimised within Google as follows:

Manufacturer:Family:Printer:Ink - so for instance search Google for 'hp photosmart c4180 ink' and we are top two and that page is a subsection

[malbro]

Hah, you say that, but we use the final section as our printer page

As I said I think Gabe will get as many answers to this one as there are possibilities, it depends on what you are selling, how the site is organised, and what you expect your potential customers to search for.

[pinbrook]

with a spp site i tend to strip all section pages out to leave me with a xml sitemap of spp pages only. i also favour my spps to be

section
subsection
product
subsection
product

thus i only have addtocart on spp and lead google to those pages only

[Darren B]

im even more confused with bloody xml sitemaps than i already was, i know does not take much but kin ell

[Runner]

Update on site performance since removal of xml sitemap

Hi all,

Since reading this thread back at the beginning of September, I decided to remove my xml sitemap from google on 3rd Sept. Reason: The number of pages indexed was approx 1/3 of those submitted and was flatlining week on week.

Since removal I can report an increase of pages indexed of 20% and an increase in visits of 17% compared to the period previous to sitemap removal.

This may be coincidence? I will persevere and see what happens....

[Duncan Rounding]

...Since removal I can report an increase of pages indexed of 20% and an increase in visits of 17% compared to the period previous to sitemap removal....

Or perhaps an incorrectly configured sitemap.

Please report back with more details as time goes by.

[john@stinkyink.]

I would incline to agree with Duncan, it would be interesting to see how your sitemap was configured. I am no expert though and I don't think there are many out there who do know the in's and out's of sitemaps. All I have reported is based on our own experience using them

[Runner]

Just took a look at my last sitemap.

Here are some of the settings that were applied automatically:

PAGE PRIORITY
TLD (www.mysite.co.uk) 1.0
index.html 0.8
catalog 0.8
brochure pages 0.8
Top section 0.8
sub-section1 0.64
sub-section2 0.51
sub-section3 0.51
SPP 0.51

In all cases the change frequency was set to daily.

Maybe time to intervene? I was interested in Pinbrokes method of stripping out section pages and just leaving the SPP's in. What do you think?

[john@stinkyink.]

Hi Keith,

Where did you post the sitemap?, we've just had a look at your site and also at Googles cache and they don't list an XML sitemap in the root directory in their cache, which we would more or less expect to still be there

[Runner]

Hello John,

Thanks for the info via email. I used to ftp my sitemap.xml to the root directory. I see that your site has it in acatalog/.

I have put a modified version, having manually gone through the priorities, in my acatalog/.

You have a link from your page footer. Do you upload the file independantly or via Additional files?

Have you found it beneficial to link to it rather than just have it sitting on the server?

I have resubmitted to Google and awaiting results. I will update later.

Regards,

Keith

[john@stinkyink.]

Morning Keith,

The XML Sitemap has to be in your root directory. Ours certainly is. We have linked to it from the bottom of our index page. We upload it independently from Actinic because we generate it independently and every time we update it we also inform Google that we have uploaded a new one in Webmaster tools.