Hi Guys, Ok im at the point of finishing i ... what the hell is going on with google site maps. I have looked in google webmaster tools and i have no errors and they tell me everything is good. This is my problem .... 1) launched a new site approx 18 months ago that contained 6,000 unique pages ... no duplicate content. 2) created and published a sitemap and submitted it to google - within 4 weeks they were into my site and indexing. 3) I saw the indexing going up between 50-400 pages every few days and was very pleased. 4) suddenly everything stopped and google had approx 5k out of my 6k pages indexed. 5) waited, waited and waited for them to come back to get the final 1k pages but nothing. 6) noticed some reported errors in my webmaster tools for URLs that were unavailable so i fixed these but still nothing , no new indexing. 7) my site map is now at 11,000 pages but still google will not index anything? i know its not sand boxed as they send me traffic and i can find my site on page one for a few of my products. why is my sitemap stuck around the 5k mark? all seems to have stoped when google found errors in a few of my urls? but these are fixed and have been for months so why can i not get them to continue to index? I have even deleted the sitemap and resubmitted it trying to kick start google. suggestions please....
I have been there and done that... You have a dynamiclly created database driven site. Correct? The template that you use is a file. And a file has a "last modified date" attribute. you have edited the database data, the not the file(s). Therefore the sitemap is telling google that there is no change to the "last modified date". In addition, verify that the "common code" components (header, footer and left nav) don't exceed 50% of the code. Otherwise it can be considered "duplicate content" Also, it would help if you supply the domain.
hi Jim, Thanks for the reply ... Can you explain more on The template that you use is a file. And a file has a "last modified date" attribute. you have edited the database data, the not the file(s). Therefore the sitemap is telling google that there is no change to the "last modified date". my site map is created at 6am each morning? I can see that google downloads it almost every other day?
goog can include or exclude any pages of your site Normally if site pages are similar google try to ignore them like generated by a script Some times Url create problem like if you are using very long URL sometimes you use similar looking url that can cause this Content is king , Key to success Regards Alex
I have alwasy read that you shouldn't exceed more than 1000 links per site map? Maybe try breaking them down into multiple maps, then maybe it will be indexed faster. Goodluck.
I think you are referring to HTML sitemaps / 100 links per page... With XML sitemaps for search engines it's 50.000 URLs per file following their own defined protocol. You may want to check this sitemaps page that has explanation and examples of all sitemap file kinds.
ok ... problem is back and it seems to be happening in cycles ... 1) submit a XML site map and google webmaster tools tell me it fine. 2) indexed to 6,000 pages but the site map contains approx 12,000 3) stays at 6,000 for maybe 4 weeks 4) at the 5 week the indexed 6,000 start to drop. 5) week 6 the indexed pages is down to 3500 only ... down almost 50% 6) week 10 the indexed pages starts to climb and within 2 weeks we are back to 6,000 This then goes back to step 3 and starts all over again. My 2 problems ... 1) at the best of times i have 6,000 indexed pages but i have 12,000 in the site map? 2) why do i keep losing 50% of my indexed pages and then regaining them? suggestions?
would love to give the url but im on a NDA with my client and im not allowed to discuss (pain in the a**) i have asked them but they have a marketing fool who for some reason thinks it would be a problem if i discussed with other industry people??? 12,000 pages are made up of 12,000 products the site sells ... each has a different description and most have images.
any suggestions? in the last week my traffic has dropped to 1 unique a day? where normally i average between 50-60per day?