Sitemap vs No sitemap comparison : surprising find.

Two sites, both with the same age domains, submitted the same day to google webmaster tools.

However Site A I did not submit a sitemap

Site B I did submit a sitemap with 11,000+ pages.



Site A has 4,000 indexed pages in Google SE even though I never submited a site map.

Site B has 1 indexed page. Yes, Just one.



.... wtf mate

 

sssssh keep it to yourself

 

WTF really...
Cos when I registered my sitemap.xml my ranking went up!
So which is which????

 

tell the names of the websites

 

how could that happen?

 

Is it not possible?
Let me clear this up. I didn't mean PR ranking, serp.
BTW: not just index/home page but other pages are indexed as well. I haven't checked if everything is indexed but random one's that I checked does come up.

 

What program are you using to generate the sitemap? Maybe Google has blacklisted a sitemap generator script or something?

 

That is extremely unlikely... Considering XML sitemaps are generated using a standardized protocol. Only sitemappers not following the standard could be in risk there.

Most likely one of the domains has backlinks, the other not

 

Ok, how old are the sites?

When you submit a site map, it could be 2 or more weeks before google gets those pages indexed. Having a pause between the time the site map is submitted and when the pages are indexed is no big deal. Dont worry about it.

In the long run it is much better to have a site map. I have seen forums with over 1 million post that only have 20,000 pages listed with google. And then there are forums that have 400,000 post and 300,000 pages listed with google.

The difference is the site map.

If you submitted your site map 3 weeks ago, and google is taking its time getting those pages listed, dont worry. It will pay off in the long run.

Inside your google webmaster tools it will tell you how many URLs were included in the site map. And out of those URLs how many are listed with google.

 

I first went to Google's webmaster account to generate the sitemap.xml, after all I didn't know what format they wanted.

Since then everytime I updated/edited pages, I just change the date within <lastmod> and re-uploaded to my server. Didn't bother to go into G webmaster account to re-generate sitemap from a scratch. Also, sometimes I deleted whole of:

If a file became redundant and added whole

thing if I uploaded a new file.

The reason I uploaded .xml file is because I first thought my pages weren't indexed because for some reasons G bot couldn't find all of my pages even though links were all on index page.

This is really confusing me now since people are saying don't use sitemap.xml!

I wonder what YOU are doing to get only your homepage indexed

*click*

 

The site is like three years old and I have both sitemap.php for human and sitemap.xml for G.

 

And google is not reporting any errors in the site maps?

Like I said, it takes some time for site map urls to get submitted. I have seen this personally on my forums and my blogs. Every 24 hours my forum submits over 500,000 urls to google via a sitemap that is generated daily. Out of that 500,000, only around 300,000 have been indexed.

But my site maps are generated every 24 hours and submitted to google via sitemap.xml.

Have you looked at your robots.txt file to make sure that google can crawl your page? Do you happen to have a robots nofollow tag in your sites header?

 

I've just checked with webmaster tool and status is OK so no errors there.
After all, if it's ok, the way I do it must be ok.

Kev, do you really generate your sitemap daily? 500,000 urls and all

 

I personally do not generate the site map daily, I have a script on my forum that does it for me.

As long as your google webmaster tools is not reporting any errors, I would not worry about it.

 

OK I cracked it.

It's ok to use G webmaster tool and sitemap stuff if you only enter ONE url.
Not with many other websites all under one account.

Mine's unaffected because I only have one url listed.

 

Using a sitemap will almost always boost your performance. The only instance where this may not be the case is for sites that are dynamic and have a lot of duplicate content.

 

did you submit all urls at the same time or over a period of time. some say submitting too many pages at once can cause a problem.

 

I use G webmaster tool and submit in .xml format.

No problem in getting indexed within 3 days.

If you want to be a good friend of G, follow its terms and use its tools. Period.