Google Sitemaps: Are They Really Important for SEO?
There are many SEOs spilt on the topic of the value in submitting a Sitemap to Google. In my opinion, it is clear that if a site has very poor navigation and on-page SEO, submitting a Sitemap might be your only alternative. But for well optimized sites, is there a benefit in submitting a Sitemap file to Google?
That is the topic of discussion in a Google Groups thread. Googler, JohnMu, gives us greater insight into how Google uses Sitemaps and why webmasters might want to consider submitting a Sitemap to Google. Here are my takeaways from the Google Groups thread.
- Help with canonical URLs. For example, by submitting your / and not your /index.html page, Google might just figure that / is the main URL and it will help with those canonical issues for that case. Of course, a 301 redirect from /index.html to / would do the same and Google recommends that even with a sitemap file, you 301 redirect URLs like those.
- The Last modification date field in the sitemap file can aid Google in quickly locating the actual change in the page. John at Google explained that Google might not have time to crawl all the pages you said changed, so if you specify the actual change in the Sitemap file, it will be easier for Google to pick up on those changes.
- The Priority, Change frequency is a lot like the last mod date, said John. If you give Google data that "makes sense", i.e. don't list 100% of your pages as the most important page on your site, then it can be useful to Google.
Those are my takeways from John's post. But here are John's takeaways:
- Yes, please send us Sitemap files, preferably sitemap.org XML files!
- Work on good URLs & use them to double-check your site's navigation
- Optional: Date or change frequency? depends on how you work.
- Also optional: Priority
I have always been a believer that well on-page optimized sites do not require or even benefit much from Google Sitemaps. But at the same time, I also do believe that giving Google extra clues about your site does help. It is something you need to think about. On one hand, by giving Google a sitemap file with all the changes, and a list of your most important pages - you are also giving those details to your competitors. Yes, that Sitemap file is public for Google and for your competitors. It totally depends on your industry.
What do I recommend. Try it out for a few months and see if it works for you. FYI, Beu also covered this thread.
Forum discussion at Google Groups.
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rustybrick in Google Optimization at June 16, 2008 7:17 AM
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Hi Barry, thanks for posting about this subject! I added a note to the original thread regarding your comments and thought I'd just copy it in here as well :).
Regarding:
"On one hand, by giving Google a sitemap file with all the changes,
and a list of your most important pages - you are also giving those
details to your competitors. Yes, that Sitemap file is public for
Google and for your competitors."
There's a way to avoid that. Sure, if your Sitemap file is called
/sitemap.xml or is listed in your robots.txt file, then other people
are going to be able to view it. That said, they will also be able to
crawl your site to find these URLs as well -- though they wouldn't
know the "meta data". However, you can also keep your Sitemap files
private: just use an obscure file name and submit the URLs directly to
the search engines.
For Google, you can use either Webmaster Tools (
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34575 )
or the "ping" HTTP request ( http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34609
). Note that if you only use the "ping" method, you will not be able
to see any statistics regarding your Sitemap files in Webmaster Tools.
In general, I would always submit it in Webmaster Tools and just use
"ping" to keep us informed of updates.
For the other search engines, you can generally also use a similar
"ping" method. Some also support a direct submission through a similar
dashboard for webmasters.
Another item you mentioned is "I have always been a
believer that well on-page optimized sites do not require or even
benefit much from Google Sitemaps." Obviously most websites do not
need Sitemap files -- otherwise we'd be doing a pretty bad job of
crawling the web :-). However, good and "well-optimized" sites are
often also fairly large and hopefully updated regularly. With a
website like that, it can take a bit of time for us to discover new or
changed content, so helping the search engines with a good Sitemap
file really makes a lot of sense. Imagine if we had to recrawl big
auction sites in order to discover all the new items ... Yikes!
Posted by JohnMu (Google) at June 16, 2008 08:30