Webmasters Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [sitemap]

A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users.

Making a sitemap to a search engines gives them hints as to which pages it should index and how often they are changed (so should be rescanned). The http://www.sitemaps.org/ site gives details on the syntax for these files.

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The Sitemap Paradox

We use a sitemap on Stack Overflow, but I have mixed feelings about it. Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs…
Jeff Atwood
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Are there any clear indicators that my sitemap file is beneficial?

I have recently created a sitemap.xml file and uploaded it to my Google Webmasters Tools account. Google didn't report any issues or errors with the uploaded sitemap of my site. Now my question is: How do I know if my sitemap is working within…
user1420373
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Prevent XML sitemaps from showing up in Google search results

How do I prevent my XML sitemap files from showing up in Google search results like this result of a site: search query: I don't understand why Google would choose to show sitemap files in search results to begin with. These files are not meant…
Stephen Ostermiller
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Why did Google stop indexing pages from our sitemap.xml?

We're seeing some pages that exist in our sitemap.xml but are inexplicably missing from Google's public search index. You can't download https://superuser.com/sitemap.xml -- we protect this file because there have been issues with it in the past --…
Michael Pryor
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Can a sitemap index contain other sitemap indexes?

I have a bi-lingual website with a sitemap index for each language that links to several different sitemaps (one for videos, one for static content, and one for articles). I would like to introduce another sitemap that links the sitemap indexes, so…
Andresch Serj
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& in sitemap links, are they correct?

Simple question, I'm asking just to make sure. A Google sitemap generator generated a sitemap.txt fle with links written like this: http://www.domain.com/category.htm?name=some-name&cat_id=8 is it correct to use the & in these links in…
Marco Demaio
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Does sitemap.xml have to be in the root directory?

This may be a simple and absurd question, but is it completely necessary for sitemap.xml file to be in the root directory of the wordpress install directory of the site, or is it ok to create a subdirectory and place it there? i.e.…
Starfs
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Google Search Console is making up URLs which don't exist in my Sitemap and then complains that these pages have error

I am working on an e-commerce website. I used to have a sitemap with category Ids, something like: https://my-domain.com/home/browse/2/45/139 daily …
Hooman Bahreini
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Can the files robots.txt and sitemap.xml be dynamic through an .htaccess redirect?

I have a multilanguage and multidomain site. It runs through a unique CMS installation (Drupal), so I have a single root directory. So if I have a static robots.txt, there I only can show the files for a single domain, as far as I know. Could I put…
Cesar
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Can I host a sitemap on another domain?

Just out of curiosity, I have developed a small app analysing and generating sitemaps for a given domain. Can I tell search engines to look for the sitemap of a given domain on my app using a dynamic url i.e. can you use cross-domain sitemaps.xml…
iammichiel
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How long does Bingbot typically take to process a sitemap submission?

I submitted a domain's sitemap.xml to Bingbot (in Webmaster Tools). It's been a couple of days but the status is still pending. Does anyone know how much time does Bing Webmaster Tools takes to complete the process and show the success or error…
vulcan raven
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Should I include everything in the sitemap or only new content?

For a website with dynamic content (new content is constantly being added), should I only include the newest content in the sitemap or should I include everything (with a sitemap index)? What are the best practices for sitemaps esp. for large…
Mee
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Sitemaps - one per subdomain or one for the base domain?

I have more than 5 subdomains on a project, say developer, www, staff and some more, what is the best practice in creating sitemaps? All subdomains that share a same sitemap at base domain (example.com/sitemap.xml) ? or different sitemaps for…
x0x
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easy tool for creating XML sitemaps? (constantly expanding site)

Does anyone recommend either a php script that I can run as a CRON or somekind of thirdparty tool i can use to create sitemaps? My website is events bases and so the pages are pretty temporal with 20+ new pages per day... Google suggests these:…
Haroldo
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Is a different sitemap per language OK? How do I tell Google about them?

The website is very, very large and I have created: sitemap_fr.xml sitemap_en.xml sitemap_es.xml Is this solution OK? If so, do I have to insert a tag to inform Google about the different sitemaps? I no longer just have sitemap.xml which it…
ziloouweb
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