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Why an XML sitemap is BAD

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48 Comments http://bro.gs/cnok

This is a no brainer for me, let’s pretend I’m your SEO and I have just found out that you are using sitemaps.

Ok.. question…

Is it true that the big 4 search engines are all link based, this means that for a page to do well in a Search Engine it needs 2 things .. internal links and external links ?

So that in mind if a Search Engine can’t find a page on your site, would it not be better to go get a link or two and point it to that page, that way we know the SE has found your site by a method which it values !

I have seen too often recently, people using XML sitemaps to get pages indexed and then they just never rank, then they ask me why these pages don’t rank..

So I have to say well what pages did the search engine find to give relevancy too, if the answer is, “I don’t we use a XML sitemaps”, then how the hell do you expect me to improve what pages rank if we don’t know what pages the SE found the natural way.

In the Search Engines eyes it looks like a standalone page, an island, a doorway page. Bad internal linkage should never be a reason to use an XML sitemap, if you have indexing problems don’t make it worse by hiding the problem.

I would rather have 10 pages indexed from a 1000 page site than 1000 pages included in a index because of an XML sitemap, IMO XML sitemaps are a quick route to supplemental hell. Make your SEO’s life easier and don’t use an XML sitemap.

48 Comments

  • Joost de Valk 2376 days ago

    http://www.joostdevalk.nl/blog/

    Agreed in part, having a Google Sitemaps account for your site can be handy though :) , also: it’s sometimes a way to get a paged indexed faster, even when it’s in your normal and correct link structure. The latter doesn’t go for often crawled pages though.

    Reply

  • DaveN 2376 days ago

    Joost ,, this isn’t about Google’s Webmaster TooL it’s about XML sitemaps ;)

    http://www.sitemaps.org

    Sitemap 0.90 is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License and has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

    Reply

  • Jeremy Luebke 2376 days ago

    I was just saying the same thing
    http://www.xuru.com/blog/msn-yahoo-now-support-sitemaps/

    The only engine I might try it on is MSN. I can’t get them to index a full site to save my life.

    Reply

  • Richard 2376 days ago

    http://www.redcardinal.ie

    Interesting discussion. Any reason why you prefer not to use both methods? Use a sitemap and create decent links into your page?

    Do you think that pages indexed via a sitemap are in some way penalised, or may be more difficult to rank well relative to pages picked up via inbound links?

    Reply

  • DaveN 2376 days ago

    richard .,, If I did that could you honestly say which one got you indexed ? the XML or the Link

    Reply

  • Thomas 2376 days ago

    http://bloggerdesign.com

    I agree that links are the key to any rankings, but I don’t agree hat sitemaps are bad. The more pages indexed mean the more chances you have of someone finding you. If all your pages are ending up supplemental, then you have other issues. XML sitemaps don’t make supplemental pages. Bad titles, descriptions and content do that.

    Reply

  • DaveN 2376 days ago

    XML sitemaps don’t make supplemental pages. Bad titles, descriptions and content do that. < - i would have to disagree with that :)

    Reply

  • Jiff 2376 days ago

    I have a site which has a special offers page that updates quite regularly, would the XML sitemaps not help with getting the new content and offers listed?

    Reply

  • Brian Mark 2376 days ago

    http://brianmark.blogspot.com/

    When doing a redesign with restructuring, doing an XML sitemap with the old filenames and the new filenames gets the 301′s to be picked up MUCH faster. Othwerwise, yeah, probably a waste of resources and bandwidth for the most part.

    Reply

  • Brent Csutoras 2376 days ago

    http://www.weirdasianews.com

    You are slowly working me to a convert on this issue. I no longer have any arguement for the sitemaps…

    Reply

  • Aaron Shear 2376 days ago

    http://www.aaronshear.com/blog

    I haven’t seen any negative affects due to the sitemap, however I agree that if your pages can’t be found by a crawler it will not help!

    Reply

  • Caydel 2376 days ago

    http://www.caydel.com

    AFAIK, the sitemap contains more information that just which pages exist in a site – do they not suggest to Google wena page was last updated, suggest crawl priority within the site etc.?

    Reply

  • Stuart 2375 days ago

    http://www.earnersblog.com

    I always recommend that clients have an xml sitemap & also a static sitemap with keyword rich anchor text on the links. Ping the sitemap to get some activity then the spiders find the real sitemap.

    Stuart
    http://www.earnersblog.com/

    Reply

  • DaveN 2375 days ago

    caydel , yes it does but then again, what you think is the most important page to be crawled might not be.

    what you are doing is telling a Search Engine something it does not already now.. hmm thats wrong, a good seo should have control of their site and have the ability to move the Search Engine spider from a to b easily,

    I not saying that a XML sitemaps has no use at all, all I am saying is has a professional SEO an XML sitemap isn’t a tool you should be using.

    DaveN

    Reply

  • Are XML Sitemaps a Road to Poor Rankings :: Adam Christie’s SEO from Scotland 2375 days ago

    [...] DaveN, a man who’s blog I really admire has a post on why not to use sitemaps. To be honest, I agree with him. Build an accessible site with good internal links and you won’t need one. Build a site with poor internal linking and rely on a sitemap and Google will see the pages as having little worth and probably chuck em in the supplementals. If you can’t be arsed to link your pages together properly on your site, why should a search engine bother giving any credence to the content of those pages. [...]

  • D. Campbell 2375 days ago

    http://www.moreonecommerce.com/

    Good post! I was always under the impression that XML sitemaps were most beneficial for pages on your site that are not a part of the normal navigational flow. If a page is a part of the main navigational structure(menu)…then adding it to a sitemap is just redundant. ;)

    Reply

  • Richard 2374 days ago

    http://www.redcardinal.ie

    Good points.

    Do you consider the feedback returned from the sitemaps console valuable? It can certainly highlight crawl and index issues that might not be plain to see. (Other tools could do this, but you have to admit G have added in features that are going to attract people – BTW I’m not trying to justify its use.)

    ‘as a professional SEO an XML sitemap isn’t a tool you should be using’ – many shades of professional, and I think that your level far, far outreaches the levels most of us mere mortals attain.

    Well this at least gives me something to think about and aspire towards.

    Cheers

    Reply

  • stu 2374 days ago

    http://www.webmasterwords.com

    I think it should be pointed out that dave is reffering to using XML sitemaps and not Google Webmastertools as a whole. You can use Webmaster Tools without submitting a sitemap so you still get the other feedback and stats.

    Reply

  • Caydel 2374 days ago

    http://www.caydel.com

    >I not saying that a XML sitemaps has no use at all, all I am saying is has a professional SEO an XML sitemap isn’t a tool you should be using.

    I have to disagree with this. But perhaps you are right that we shouldn’t depend on it alone..

    I am not willing to completely stop using sitemaps, whether I am a professional or no – if they weren’t providing something to Google, they wouldn’t be pushing them.

    Reply

  • SEPguy 2372 days ago

    http://www.sepguy.com

    I mostly agree with you dave on the idea that if it hasnt been found ‘properly’ then its not worth finding , however I guess it is good for loooooonnnnngg tail stuff that you might get a referral from once in a year or 2.

    I’ve spidered a forum im working on with xenu, stipping out the pointless pages and formatting for google/yahoo sitemaps. It will be interesting if it helps on the really obscure stuff.

    Reply

  • SEOwippet 2372 days ago

    http://www.futilebrands.com

    Internal linking is the key. Every page should have multiple links to inner pages.

    I also find printing a sitemap out and distributing it to people outside internet cafes helps alot.

    Reply

  • internet marketing guy 2372 days ago

    http://www.richnow.co.uk

    A sitemap XML is a good way to tell Google what pages are on your site, but I agree that you need to have inbound links pointing to your internal pages to help them get indexed by Google

    Reply

  • JohnMoo 2366 days ago

    http://gsitecrawler.com/

    For what it’s worth, Google at least does index hidden pages if the site has enough value. Of course it’s not a replacement for normal internal linking, nobody likes orphaned pages.

    However, there’s one aspect of sitemaps that is often forgotten: you can specify more than just the URL, like the last change date. That alone is worth more than the work you have to put into the sitemap files: Imagine you add a new page, link to it from one of your edge pages. For Google to know to crawl the new page, it needs to re-crawl the edge page. How often does that happen? With the sitemap file you can specify that the edge page has changed (and specify the new page, for whatever that’s worth). On my test sites, Google will re-crawl the changed page within hours of pinging the sitemap file. How neat is that? No full crawl required. Amazing.

    Another element that is often forgotten by smart SEOs is that the average webmaster has never in his life crawled his own site or watched a crawler try to traverse his pages / links. How many pure-javascript navigation sites are still out there? How many people have broken and outdated links left and right, have duplicate content because they didn’t pay attention to their URLs (think Windows-Servers… ouch), use session-IDs or cookies as a requirement, have a linking structure that no sane crawler would want to look at… and they don’t even know that it matters. By forcing them to crawl their own sites, they are being forced to think about crawlability… and “findability”: if a search engine can’t crawl the site, they won’t refer visitors either. And, as a free bonus, in general if the site is well crawlable, it’s sometimes even more usable and accessable (not always :-) ).

    (Disclaimer: I make a free Google Sitemaps generator)

    Reply

  • Cornwall SEO » Blog Archive » Interesting SEO links found around the web 2365 days ago

    [...] Why XML sitemaps are bad [...]

  • Milan Dinić’s Blog » Blog Archive » Why an XML sitemap is BAD 2357 days ago

    [...] David Naylor wrote an interesting text about XML sitemaps: This is a no brainer for me, let’s pretend I’m your SEO and I have just found out that you are using sitemaps. [...]

  • Thomas Schulz 2353 days ago

    http://www.micro-sys.dk/blogs/

    For what it is worth, there exist tools that can calculate page importance based on the internal website linking structure.

    My point just being that there are other ways to make sure your internal linking structure is ok / good.

    Reply

  • johnon.com - John Andrews - » Sitemaps is for Sissies 2353 days ago

    [...] I just watched the WebProNews interview with Vanessa Fox (via TheBuzzBox), where Rand Fishkin asked Vanessa about Sitemaps. Basically, Dave Naylor said sitemaps is for SEO sissies, and Rand wanted to know if Dave is right (or something like that). [...]

  • Web Design Ireland 2250 days ago

    http://www.tophatsolutions.ie

    thanks for the information

    but i would have to disagree with you, XML sitemaps have an advantage ove SEO

    Cheers
    Stephen

    Reply

  • G 2248 days ago

    G

    I think that sitemaps is a good tool.

    Reply

  • Google sitemaps - goed of slecht? - WHELP! 2185 days ago

    [...] David Naylor – Why an XML Sitemap is BAD [...]

  • trending 2168 days ago

    http://www.googletrend.info

    Using a google sitemap is absolutely needed, your pages will automatically find their way to the correct SE indexing as time passes. Having the information ready in no way effects your future of the web site, only effects the free traffic you would have missed out on not having a sitemap.!

    Reply

  • Why you should not use XML Sitemaps - SEO Blog - Joost de Valk 2126 days ago

    [...] arguments for it aren’t new. Dave has made it very clear why an XML sitemap is BAD. It’s basically throwing away very valuable data… Up until now, you don’t have a [...]

  • From Dom 2107 days ago

    From Dom

    I have never used sitemaps and just found htis tool at http://www.webuildpages.com/tools/rorsitemap.htm
    They recommande to use ROR sitemaps…
    Does this make a difference?

    I have a good ranking on my sites, but thought that this could imrove it even higher.

    …. then I fell in this blog…. and wonder if I did the right thing (the least I can say).

    Any advice?

    Dom

    Reply

  • Thomas Schulz 2020 days ago

    http://www.micro-sys.dk/blogs/

    There is another reason to consider using sitemaps. You can more quickly get updates (new pages and changed ones) pushed into search engines (update sitemap and ping).

    Anyways, of course, without any backlinks, you are going to be dead in the water :)

    Reply

  • Hans 1985 days ago

    this is an interesting post, and i am looking at ways to get my pages out of the supplemental index and have been looking into sitemaps as a result.

    I just checked this sites supplemental index score, and according to the tool 79% of this websites pages are in the supplemental index. So it does not appear removing the sitemap will get your pages out of the supplemental index.

    here is the tool i was refering to

    http://www.mapelli.info/tools/supplemental-index-ratio-calculator/

    Reply

  • RIA Sucks for SEO… So Far 1914 days ago

    [...] really twig on to that being a bad thing until i read about it on daveN but it seems obvious that XML sitemaps are not always a good idea for getting pages indexed. Ok.. [...]

  • Virtues of a sitemap for your blog/website | SEO 1727 days ago

    [...] optimization) practitioners claim that a XML sitemap is bad for your blog/website. Read it here and here. But their arguments are not convincing. If it is bad, Google or Yahoo would not stress the [...]

  • d-seo 1714 days ago

    http://www.d-seo.com.au

    The definition of a “doorway” page is basically an SEO landing page that isn’t linked from the other pages of your site (i.e. the only reason it’s their is for SEO).

    The problem that I see with Google sitemaps is that every page should be linked in some way to other pages in your site, so a search engine bot should be able to find them anyway. What I’m saying here is other than finding doorways pages that aren’t linked from anywhere else, I don’t actually see how sitemaps are useful (with the exception of page indexing ‘priority’ if you have 50,000 pages).

    Reply

  • belitungismyheart 1618 days ago

    Yes i have the same think with you, dav.
    Ii never use sitemap options,coz in fact my blog still have good pagerank.

    Reply

  • Steffen 1451 days ago

    http://www.sundere.dk/sundhed/sundhedsgrafik.php

    I have a point that speaks FOR using sitemaps. In my website i have pages that extract their content from xml documents. That means that for site optimisation i need googlebot to see the xml pages, as well as the pages that show the content. The problem is that googlebot doesnt see these xml files even though the pages that show the content have links to the xml document. So i have to use a sitemap to tell googlebot that these files exist before they appear in google search results. I would like it to work without doing this, but i havent found a way its possible…

    Reply

  • Linxiting 1448 days ago

    http://www.linxiting.com

    I think it’s always best to use everything you can…
    Make sure your website is linked to a lot of websites and try to get linked from other websites. But why shouldn’t you use sitemaps. It can realy help u get in search engines faster than you think.

    That’s off course my humble opinion… :)

    Reply

  • Mapping the Course: XML Sitemaps | Chris Stead.com 1206 days ago

    [...] just read a short, relatively old blog post by David Naylor regarding why he believes XML sitemaps are bad. People involved with SEO probably know and recognize the name. I know I did. I have to disagree [...]

  • Simon 1193 days ago

    http://onlinefreight.com.au

    I use Yola for my freight websites , I just discovered yola create the sitemap for me I just need to submit in webmaster – I have tried all the other on and offpage methods , concerned that my sitemap will make it worse/?

    Reply

  • 21 conversie optimalisatie geheimen - Frankwatching 1190 days ago

    [...] Naylor schreef daarover eerder in 2006 al één van zijn bekende blogposts, met de titel “Why an XML sitemap is BAD“. Toch maken nog steeds miljoenen sites er gebruik [...]

  • Website Design Gloucestershire 1074 days ago

    http://www.hostpipe.co.uk

    I wonder if this post if actually slightly outdated now as it was dated 2006. An SEO company doing some work for one of our clients has referenced the article as a reason for not using sitemap.xml files.

    Whilst inbound and external links are important a well constructed sitemap.xml file DOES make life easier for search engines, and should definitely be used in conjuction with a well built and well linked website.

    It seems a little misguided to put people off of using one on their site.

    Kind Regards

    Rob

    Reply

  • BeTamil 873 days ago

    http://www.betamil.com

    Hi Chaps,

    Pls. advice how many links should be in a sitemap.xml?

    Reply

  • Richard 743 days ago

    http://rssconverter.street.co.id

    Hi David,

    I just finished my last project about “Convert Search Results into XML Sitemap”. Sometimes it works, but sometimes not works.

    When I try to open the source, all content there, but not viewed on browser.

    Could you please give some advice about thies problem?

    I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

    regards,
    Richard Daris.

    Reply

  • Yogesh 207 days ago

    http://www.techbywords.com/

    I suppose David is right here.

    For the my new tech blog called techbywords.com I have been using SEO Yoast Plugin and as usual when created this blog I installed SEO Yoast from Day 1. SEO Yoast Plugin includes XML sitemap inside it, its located at http://www.techbywords.com/sitemap_index.xml.

    Within 10 days I had 12 articles ready and I have submitted sitemap to Webmaster Tools. Webmaster tools still says 2 out of 12 are indexed, that’s not more Google has only indexed tags archives faster than homepage or category listing and Post pages are not indexed quickly (infact not all indexed). Post Sitemap has changing freq set as One Week. Will I need to stay for a week to index my pages? or shall I remove the Sitemap functionality temporarily & use it back latter in coming months?

    You can email me at my email which you know…

    Reply

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