Hello there Let's assume I have the following: Site.com |- /Directory/ |-/Articles/ |-/Forums/ and each and every one of these directories is quite heavy, what do I do - place everything in one sitemap which should be availeble from the index or place a sitemap in each directory and place the following code in the sitemap on site.com/sitemap.com <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"> <sitemap><loc>http://www.site.com/articles/sitemap.xml</loc></sitemap> <sitemap><loc>http://www.site.com/forums/sitemap.xml</loc></sitemap> <sitemap><loc>http://www.site.com/Directory/sitemap.xml</loc></sitemap> </sitemapindex> Code (markup): What is considered to be the best option in this case? (Around 20,000 pages on the entire site)
You should do whatever makes it easiest for you to maintain your Sitemaps. Each Sitemap can have up to 50,000 URLs, so technically, you could include everything in one Sitemap. However, if that's more difficult to manage, you could create Sitemaps for each directory and submit them via a Sitemap index file. We treat the submitted URLs the same way in both cases, and we provide the same level of reporting (Sitemap parsing errors, etc.) in either case.
I would go with a signle sitemap because we don't know if Google index all xml(s) of your sitemap at the same time, or they might do one, stop and return after few hours to continue with the next one.
I'll suggest use multiple sitemap for your site. Create multiple sitemap and link it to sitemap index.
Look google can trace you website in both situation so it up to you what type of site map you are using. Use that format which you can maintain
use one site map or not submit your all site map on your Google account.because as i know google support multiply site maps
use a primary sitemap, and submit it urself to webmaster tools. this will be the one G looks at first, and easier for you to control any duplicate content/pages