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Google sitemaps Don't use.!!!!!

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I don't use google site maps anymore.

Reason when ever I remove a site map the site goes up in the SERP's.:eek:

Anyone else had this experience .?

I suspect one is giving google a little to much information.?

Earl
 
hmm, probably worth testing, are you sure it's not just a question of serps volumes are dropping off at specific times?
 
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Kev Jaques said:
hmm, probably worth testing, are you sure it's not just a question of serps volumes are dropping off at specific times?
Click to expand...

No my suspicion is as said.a little to much info to google for your own good.:)

Besides I found it to be inaccurate in its stats as is google analytics.

I have proof that analytics is wrong so why not the sitemaps.?

Earl
 
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All cookie-based Analytics packages are around 15-20% inaccurate due to the number of computers that don't accept cookies. That includes Google Analytics
 
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as an experiment i have just deleted mine. I dropped in the serps a few days after I added my map but put it down to, well i don't know. Anyway it will be interesting to see if anything happens
 
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I've always wondered what all of the fuss was about regarding site maps, I thought it was a fad that everyone was latching onto.

I have my own web sites and my clients websites without site maps and all are performing very well.

A thread on WHT also highlighted that it has had a negative effect on a number of websites.

Lately I have been adding site maps to clients and a new website of mine to see if it makes a difference. A few years ago we were all told that Google would know if a new page was added to a website and that was good enough so why are site maps now supposedly the thing to have?

Small websites don't need them and large websites are most probably well indexed.

I think it's a fashion that has spread throughout the industry and we're all believing that it's a new facility that's crucial.

Iain
 
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I have made my thoughts on sitemaps clear in the past, from the very off I saw them causing problems to already spidered sites. Sitemaps have been used in the past to support poor navigation systems, file structions and internal linking structures. On a well constructed site with a decent structure and decent linking, they will have no real benefit. on larege sites they can be used to discourage indexing of poor value pages, and encourage indexing of higher value pages.

As I have said for a few years now, if your site is being indexed ok, avoid a sitemap like the plague.
 
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An Oasis said:
Care to expand a little? How long a period are you experimenting over? And does this coincide with updates?
Click to expand...

I suspect it's all to do with the importance of the pages. Google can usually workout which pages are impriotant on a website. When you submit a sitemap the importance of each page is set to 0.5. This can have the effect of lowering the importance of pages that google has already indexed with the resulting drop in ranking.

http://www.google.co.uk/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=13450
 
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fisicx said:
I suspect it's all to do with the importance of the pages. Google can usually workout which pages are impriotant on a website. When you submit a sitemap the importance of each page is set to 0.5. This can have the effect of lowering the importance of pages that google has already indexed with the resulting drop in ranking.

http://www.google.co.uk/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&topic=13450
Click to expand...


Good point.

However, the reason I was asking is that someone who knows far more than I, recommended waiting for a minimum of two updates when making changes to a website before making any conclusions as to how the changes had impacted.
 
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While I agree that sitemaps are worthless for most of the sites I think it's childish to say that a sitemap alone will cause a drop in rankings.

Fisicx had a good point somewhere above but that's just for deep pages on most of the cases.
 
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Nope, of you have a really high ranking page and add a site map but leave important at the default setting of 0.5 then Google will assume the page isn't really that important when compare to your T&C (for example). When the site is next indexed, Google may well decide to drop your ranking because the page is no longer deemed important when compared to a competitors page whose importance is set to 1.0.
 
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An Oasis said:
Good point.

However, the reason I was asking is that someone who knows far more than I, recommended waiting for a minimum of two updates when making changes to a website before making any conclusions as to how the changes had impacted.
Click to expand...

Two updates as in what exactly? Do you mean giving Google time to crawl your site twice?

Also, doesn't a sitemap have benefits for sites like mine which have product pages generated from a database?

G says:
Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

Your site has dynamic content.
Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process - for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or Flash.
Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

I'm interested in trying this though as we have always had a sitemap in the G Webmasters but think we should rank stronger :)
 
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Mister B said:
As an aside Earl, will she be planning to fly her broomstick back round here once the ban is over? Assuming that we're talking about the same one:)

Mister B
Click to expand...

I suspect she may be able to do one lap before she is banned again.:|:)

You can't keep a big mouth down.:D

Earl
 
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I think he meant - if you're already no1 then don't change ANYTHING. Why would you want to? :)

James.
 
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Spock said:
Also, doesn't a sitemap have benefits for sites like mine which have product pages generated from a database?

I'm interested in trying this though as we have always had a sitemap in the G Webmasters but think we should rank stronger :)
Click to expand...

Yes - this is exactly the sort of site that will benefit from a sitemap. however you need to set it up correctly. Make sure you lower the importance of the supporting pages (T&C, privacy, about us etc) and raise the importance of those pages you want to promote.

At the same time make sure you also use the new canonical tag to stop Google indexing all the duplicate page generated by the DB: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
 
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Ok it could be coincidence but.....

I removed my sitemap on Friday to experiment and guess what? Today I have seen new rankings - for deep linked pages mostly and new keyword combinations in my analytics.

Also bumped up one of my keyphrases to page 1 :D

Will monitor for now but v v interesting....
 
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In theory you should never need sitemaps.
There is the odd exception but all your pages should link togeher at some point anyway.

When i started it used to be just called a sitemap, not sure why its now known as a google sitemap but hey ho.

Unless you have a complex and confusing site its just not worth the hassle.
 
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I "experimented" and dropped ~50 positions :-(

I know my site has a few SEO issues anyway, but I thought I'd try removing the site map & went from position ~23 to ~70 in 24 hours.

I'm gonna leave it a few more days, but if that does nothing I'll stick the site map back in and see (hope!) that I go back up again.
 
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tony84 said:
In theory you should never need sitemaps.
There is the odd exception but all your pages should link togeher at some point anyway.

When i started it used to be just called a sitemap, not sure why its now known as a google sitemap but hey ho.

Unless you have a complex and confusing site its just not worth the hassle.
Click to expand...


It is called a sitemap as it uses XML sitemap protocol that Googl ehas championed.

I think there is some confisuion over a static page with all the links of your site on (sitemap), and what has become known as a google sitemap (which in reality is something else), but in a nutcshell it is a page of xml code like this.

<url>
<loc>http://www.domain.co..uk/enquiry.html</loc>
<priority>0.60</priority>
<lastmod>2009-03-19T12:08:20+00:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>

This is put together for each page, and submitted
 
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I've decided to remove our site map and see what happens. On a site with only a handful of pages, I always wandered what the benefit was, if any. Will report back if I see any changes, good or bad.
 
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