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Well in defense of XML site maps… They only take a minute or two to generate. Plus I have done a few “tests” and while the tests appeared to go well, reality was that they failed behind the scenes. If it were not for having an xml site map tied into my G Webmaster tools, I would not have known about the failures until it was too late. Agreeably they shouldn’t be a substitute for crappy site architecture and don’t provide much SEO benefit, but it still can be used as a supplemental guide for crawlers.

Sitemaps was reporting a URL error even though the HTTP headers etc. tested fine. I am surprised G had issues, but then I am not. Nonetheless G demonstrated that they paid a lot of attention to the sitemap, and very quickly.  So one could even question its role as a supplement since it seemed to play overly well with the mechanisms.

I may set up a test domain and test further because I am curious to see what the outcome would have been if I left things as they were.

I have rarely used them as part of the SEO process is ensuring indexation/spider-ability - much like Charles said,if all the other ducks are in a row, no reason to not do so... but certainly not high on the to-do list for me....

for those who want an XML-sitemap ... http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

indeed just takes 2 minutes and it won't hurt, but yes, if everything else done right, there shouldn't be a reason to do, then again, it does help to get more pages indexed when submitted to google sitemaps ... (which also means you probably don't have enough links and/or not a good internal linking, otherwise it wouldn't make any difference )

Last edited by LinkPopularity (2008-07-02 11:34:26)

...and as a result of using it, I found (slight) errors on some pages after viewing the auto-generated html sitemap...for example, title tags had been missed, or mispelt.

If nothing else, running your site through a generator like that mentioned is worth it for the reason ER points out. Quick, clean plus some even identify pages with dead links

@ atwhatcost, the sitemap did not fail, it helped me ID a flaw in one of my tests. I am pro XML Site map

atwhatcost to keep things simple, upload the site (make it live) and then go to www.xml-sitemaps.com and generate a sitemap. Then upload the raw sitemap.xml file to the root of your site (there is no need to have a internal link to it).

To see if you did it properly you should be able to add sitemap.xml to the end of your URL and be able to view it online e.g. yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

If you have access to the robots.txt I would also recomend that you add the sitemap URL to your robots.txt file e.g.

User-Agent: *

Allow: /

Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Disallow: /stats/

Disallow: /cgi-image/

Disallow: /webmail/

Sitemap: http://www.luaushirts.com/sitemap.xml

Hi  Laurie_m,

I think fragos put it well, "we have two classes of site visitors. One's human and the other is a web crawler. Both should leave happy.".

In my experience and with others I've discussed this with (who have done a lot of testing), they find sitemaps to be of benefit to their sites.

Is it overrated?  I don't think so. Search engines like Google recommend having a sitemap in XML format. I'm a big believer in giving the search engines what they want.

I've had sites where pages were not indexed, even though I had a navigation bar on the side that linked to all of my pages. A sitemap fixed this issue and got my pages indexed, sure there are other methods but using an  XML map worked. Now the search engines know I have more relevant content on my site and those pages bring in more traffic.

I would take any article like that with a pinch of salt. I say that because he shows no hard evidence that sitemaps are bad, there was NO TESTING.

Traffic and rankings are something that need to be tested over time.

He says that the sitemap was the cause of his friends blog not receiving as much traffic as it used to. This makes no sense without thorough testing. He even says it himself  "Granted, my experience is purely anecdotal. What happened in this case may not happen in the next case.".

In my experience and many others Sitemaps have not hurt my sites traffic.

Again give the humans and the bots what they want.

Dave