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October 9, 2009

HTML Sitemap vs. XML Sitemap: Google Says HTML Comes First

In one of Matt Cutts' videos on SEO questions, he answers a question about if you should build an HTML or XML Sitemap. An HTML sitemap is an old school landing page for users to find all (or most) of your pages on your web site via single page. In many cases, for large sites, a site would require many HTML sitemaps to make this useful, but for smaller sites (see RustyBrick's sitemap), it makes sense to put everything on a single web page. An XML sitemap can also be multiple files, but they are not visible to a user, only a search engine spider.

When Matt from Google was asked if you had a choice, which one would you pick, he picked an HTML Sitemap because both users and spiders can chew on it. I am not sure if most SEOs would make the same selection, but this person didn't ask an SEO, he asked Matt.

Here is Matt's video:

As Matt said, once you make an HTML sitemap, making an XML version is extremely easy. So, my advice, do both, if possible.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.



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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at October 9, 2009 8:36 AM Comments (6)

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Comments

very useful, thanks for sharing! twitter(at)locspoc

 

Posted by Adelaide DJ at October 9, 2009 19:55

And I always thought Google favors XML more, since I've always read it on other blogs.

 

Posted by Rene at October 10, 2009 02:36

Great post. Thanks.

 

Posted by Karl at October 10, 2009 11:15

Pretty dang interesting! I'm currently solving a problem for a client with some pretty poorly programmed sitemaps. Google is clearly using the data from the xml sitemap and not the html one.

First 100 links in the xml sitemap are ones that shouldn't be there first, and it's causing all sorts of strange indexing issues.

 

Posted by Ryan at October 12, 2009 00:01

thanks for a great post

 

Posted by Fredrik at October 12, 2009 09:58

I thought Matt would be the right person than any SEO person and he is well accessible, hence threw the ball into the lion's court and got clear reply than any wishy washy answer from an SEO expert. Moreover, many webmasters and SEOs were puzzled and didn't have a clear answer on this aspect, now that it's clear. The underlying theory of search engine bots itself is scanning html links, so why do you want separate sitemaps for bots and human beings?

 

Posted by Raj at October 13, 2009 12:10

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