Google: Sitemaps Do Not Guarantee Indexing

Dec 26, 2013 - 8:40 am 11 by

Google SitemapThis is likely obvious to most the readers here but it is simple, submitting an XML sitemap to Google does not mean the pages in that sitemap will be fully indexed.

A Google Webmaster Help thread has Google's Gary Illyes responding to a question about why a site that has submitted 40,000 pages only has 100 pages indexed in Google.

For example, here are two sites that have submitted their URLs to Google via an XML sitemap file. One, has submitted 17,987 pages and Google has actually index all of them, plus one. :) The other has submitted over 7 million pages, but Google has only indexed about 4 million of them, which is about 53% of the pages submitted.

Why did Google index all the pages on one site but only about half on this other site? Why did Google only index 100 pages of the 40,000 of the site complaining above?

Gary from Google explains:

First and foremost, submitting a Sitemap doesn't guarantee the pages referenced in it will be indexed. Think of a Sitemap as a way to help Googlebot find your content: if the URLs weren't included in the Sitemap, the crawlers might have a harder time finding those URLs and thus they might be indexed slower.

Another thing you want to pay attention to is that our algorithms may decide not to index certain URLs at all. For instance, if the content is shallow, it may totally happen it will not be indexed at all.

Google make take a look and decide based on the content or the PageRank that the page is not worth indexing.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google March 2024 Core Update Finished April 19th (A Week Ago)

Apr 26, 2024 - 4:40 pm
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 26, 2024

Apr 26, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Core Update Updates, Site Reputation Abuse Coming, Links, Ads & More

Apr 26, 2024 - 8:01 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Publisher Center No Longer Allows Adding Publications

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Tests Placing The Snippet Date Next To URL

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Breaks Out Googlebot IP Ranges For User-Triggered Fetchers

Apr 26, 2024 - 7:31 am
Previous Story: PlugRush Adult Ad Network Might Harm Your Google Rankings