Are Sitemaps Evil

[quikshop]

One of my colleagues was telling me about a website he has been optimising for a client.

He'd been making excellent progress with it, improving its SERPs and all round visibility when he decided to add its sitemap to Google.

Within days the website had dropped right down the search engine pages and it wasn't until he removed the sitemap from Google that his clients website regain its former SERPs.

Has anyone else experienced this bizarre behaviour? Any thoughts about the possible cause?

 

[An Oasis]

Never seen that before, we are talking xml based SM?

I do know that neither Live or Ask appear to spider xml based SMs.

 

[fisicx]

Heard about this but never experienced it.

For 99% of all websites, a site map isn't necessary. If google has already indexed the site then a site map doesn't add any value. The google site map page offer reasons to have a sitemap and it seems that for most of use it's not worth the effort:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318&query=sitemap&topic=&type=

 

[matt.chatterley]

Has anyone else experienced this bizarre behaviour? Any thoughts about the possible cause?

Never had the sample problem, though Sitemaps are of limited value (that is to say, they do have some value, but only in certain respects).

Are you able to share the URL so we can have a look?

 

[awebapart.com]

I do think that sometimes people add sitemaps (xml) to solve problems they haven't got, just because they've heard someone mention on a website that adding a sitemap will improve ranking. If your site is already search engine friendly and being indexed by google then you don't really need a sitemap. Some will say that sitemaps can help since they can tell the search engines what pages have changed or have been added, but surely shouldn't you be telling your real users about this too (e.g. having a latest news links from your home page, which will get picked up quickly by search engines too), without this you are merely pandering for the search engines not for your users - something that google tells you not to do.

Another issue with sitemaps is that some people wrongly think that it's a one off setup job, get some tool to generate a sitemap file, add the xml file to your site and that's it. This merely gives a snapshot of your site at a given time, and your sitemap will become outdated as you add to your site, thus giving the search engines conflicting views of what your site is all about. So if you do generate and add sitemap files, do it on a regular basis as you update your site.

The quality of some sitemap generation tools can be questionable too. Give a sitemap generation tool your web address and get it to generate your sitemap, and you are then relying on the sitemap tool being able to find your pages and hoping that your site is search engine friendly. A situation where a sitemap is a 'must have' is when your site isn't search engine friendly, but if this is the case, then an automatic sitemap generation tool wont be able to find your pages either. With a partially search engine friendly site, there's more chance that google will find your pages via its own bot indexing than some sitemap generation tool, since google's indexing algorithm will be more advanced.

So a sitemap that is wrong, for any reason, will be detrimental to a site, and this issue has cropped up before on this forum.

Finally one of my clients was approached by a 'SEO consultancy' peddling sitemap snakeoil, and I was asked to add a sitemap file the SEO consultant had created for the site. My client soon ditched the SEO consultant when I pointed out that the sitemap file they supplied was for a completely different company's website!

 

[quikshop]

Sorry I can't post the url, its a friends' clients website and he (or they) wouldn't appreciate it too much

I'm still curious how uploading a sitemap (without any errors on it and with sensible priority settings) could negatively impact SERPs in such a big way.

I'm going to try removing the sitemap from one of our well indexed websites and I'll report back any noticeable SERPs changes if any.

It does seem though from reading Google's own advice that the sitemap tool is only valid for new websites or ones that change significantly and frequently.

 

[FireFleur]

The google shuffle

Yeah, a sitemap can bring you down in the rankings but it is more often only temporary. If you have number one for your brand that is enough in many cases.

Once you start going for keywords, then things happen and remember it is not just you working on your site with google, it is everyone else playing a similar game at the same time.

Google I don't think is penalizing people for using a sitemap at the moment under general circumstances, more often it is the other way around.

If you are going to do a sitemap, and it is not always required, then either use one google recommends or the python local generator (sitemap_gen.py)

 

[Birmingham]

yes they are and it's comforting to find someone else who suspects the same.

i always advise people to make a standard HTML sitemap usable by all search engines and humans alike. nevermind this google-xml-sitemap thing.

 

not to sure on this but have noticed site maps reporting different rankings for various keyword to the ones shown in the SERP's.

and by quite a large margin.

Earl

 

[quikshop]

We've just launched two brand new online shops which we're going to use as live eCommerce and SEO case studies. A progress page will appear on the respective websites shortly showing how we get on SEOing and trading in the martial arts and aromatherapy markets.

Anyone already trading in those markets have nothing to fear Both shops are purely to demonstrate our services (putting our money where our collective mouths are ) and will be sold after 12 months.

For both shops we're using the Google Sitemap option simply because neither of them are known by Google yet, but its our intention to remove the sitemap for one of the shops as soon as its indexed.

It will also help us nail down these types of SEO issues which we can only speculate on at the moment.

 

[An Oasis]

I do know that neither Live or Ask appear to spider xml based SMs.

Sorry I was wrong on that one they can but don't seem to with any real fequency, however each has the facility to submit an updated SM to.

 

[quikshop]

Sorry I was wrong on that one they can but don't seem to with any real fequency, however each has the facility to submit an updated SM to.

To be honest Live and Ask contribute such a tiny amount of traffic to any of our websites they are not worth the consideration.

Its not good though, all of us optimising for a single search engine but who's fault is that?? Is it Yahoo et al for not coming up with a better or even a comparable alternative?

 

[realmaverick]

I'm still curious how uploading a sitemap (without any errors on it and with sensible priority settings) could negatively impact SERPs in such a big way.

With no errors, the sitemap won't hurt.

Here is the answer to your Q. People starting out in SEO, read about 1001 different tips from various websites, often conflicting. They check their stats daily and if there's a change they contribute what they did yesterday with the change. But it just DOESN'T work that way.

He's done something else, possibly weeks before that caused the change OR Google's algorithm changed.

Contributing changes is SERPS to recent changes, is often a deadly mistake.

Sitemaps don't in any way, shape or form hurt your rankings.

 

[stanneon]

sitemaps can help users as they naviate through your site much easier. sitemaps will be bad if they have broken or dead links in it...

 

[quikshop]

sitemaps can help users as they naviate through your site much easier. sitemaps will be bad if they have broken or dead links in it...

Where do you get your Burberry clothing from, they don't allow independent online retailers to sell their products

 

[An Oasis]

To be honest Live and Ask contribute such a tiny amount of traffic to any of our websites they are not worth the consideration.

True but if they don't have the resources to conduct large scale spidering, then their data will always be behind, therefore by giving them a push...you may see visits increase.

 

[ScottB]

Never heard of a sitemap hurting a site - generally any URL found via a sitemap should be found via crawling anyway so it shouldn't make any difference.

Just resubmitted a sitemap for a site I just had redesigned and had all URLs reindexed within 24 hours which was pretty cool (the site was only getting indexed once or twice a month previously) - although it was included in Google News as well at the same time so that may have helped.

 

[ozbon]

I think that a sitemap is useful to have as a tool when a site launches - but in my experience they're a pain to keep remembering to update (particularly on a client-managed website)

From what I've seen on sites I run, if a sitemap exists then those are the only pages Google et al will index - new pages seem to get ignored as a result.

As such, I tend to use a sitemap initially to get the site into Google etc. and indexed, but once it's there I'll delete the sitemap after the first month or two (max three months) and just the crawlers do their thing properly.