Sitemap on Large site

I know that if you have a large site and go over the limit you need an index for Google.

My question is, do I then need to add all of the sitemaps that are covered by that index? ie sitemap.xml, and sitemap2.xml....

Also if I choose to use the gz option, do I need to add both the .gz and the regular xml?

Thanks

 

Hi!

You should add all your sitemaps into the sitemaps index files. Eigher the .gz or the uncompressed version. But if the uncompressed sitemap files are to big, I would just use the compressed .gz version.

Tobias

 

When sitemaps first launched we decided not to take up on it as we have a pretty busy site and generally any changes are picked up almost straight away anyway. As of late though spidering of our site has been almost random and I wondered if this was perhaps an alterior motive from G to 'punish' people not using sitemaps with gradually less frequent spidering.

I guess my main question is "We have no problems ranking, we have no (apart from the issue above) problems with spiders reaching parts of the site we want it to... should we bother with sitemaps??"

Or is it google with an issue which is the reason for the randomness of spidering?

 

If your website is indexed well, than there is no real reason to submit a sitemap.

But maybe you're interested in the Google Sitemaps statistics - they offer really nice data. You just have to create a verification file - but Google will tell you what to do.

I don't think that Google penalizes webpages that don't participate in Google Sitemaps.

Tobias

 

We use a Google Site Map for all sites now. This is the fastest way to add the site's url list to the Google Index List. We submit this site map via Google's Webmaster Account on a weekly (Friday) basis.

We use gSiteCrawler with no problem.

I am starting to believe that Google is using the "Last Modified" date of the web page (file) as an indicator to index or not index the file. Everytime this file date is changed, Google indexes the page within 1 week.

In addition, I have one site that has 11 site maps in it. Each is listed in the Google Webmaster Account and have no problem with them.

 

Sitemap Writer Pro is the most optimal solution.