Changing Sitemap page importance

[Spock]

Following on from some recent sitemap threads I thought I'd ask about how to change the importance of individual pages. I have a database driven site so need to give Google a sitemap to ensure all pages are found.

Looking at my xml sitemap that was created using the automatic priority settings of xml-sitemaps.com I see the index page is 1.00, then the other pages vary from 0.80 all the way down to 0.51

My important pages after the index are 0.80 and there is nothing inbetween that and the index 1.00! So why would none be 0.90 or even 0.95?

If I mess with these will it affect how I am indexed? If I make one page 0.90 will it reduce the importance of the index? I have several pages with articles and lots of nice keywords which are designed to help SERPS so was thinking of bumping these up in the priority but, well...I'm scared

Has anyone had any experience of changing the priority?

 

[Ali-v-8]

Following on from some recent sitemap threads I thought I'd ask about how to change the importance of individual pages. I have a database driven site so need to give Google a sitemap to ensure all pages are found.

Looking at my xml sitemap that was created using the automatic priority settings of xml-sitemaps.com I see the index page is 1.00, then the other pages vary from 0.80 all the way down to 0.51

My important pages after the index are 0.80 and there is nothing inbetween that and the index 1.00! So why would none be 0.90 or even 0.95?

If I mess with these will it affect how I am indexed? If I make one page 0.90 will it reduce the importance of the index? I have several pages with articles and lots of nice keywords which are designed to help SERPS so was thinking of bumping these up in the priority but, well...I'm scared

Has anyone had any experience of changing the priority?

Sirearl suggested something a few weeks back and i tried a test with three of my websites.
by removing the sitemap two of them went to page two. one is moving up slowly.
Now i didnt have time to check this further.
Could be coincidence could be that google actually has to cache the pages instead of relying on information provided by you.
Anyone else.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

If your site is currently being spidered properly, then don't bother with a sitemap.

 

[Spock]

Guys, Google says use a sitemap if your site has dynamic content, which I have been told means pages generated by a database.

My site is spidered well but this is probably because of the sitemap!

 

[clairejarrett]

I'm interested in this topic too, anyone else have any advice regarding changing the priority? Should it really only be used for dynamic content as I have read a few times that all sites need one to be spidered correctly. Google reports errors if you leave all priorities set to 1.

 

[DanHarrison]

It depends on how you manage the content for your site. A number of free tools allow you to specify the priority of different types of page before the sitemap is generated.

If you don't have lots of dynamic content, you could just edit your generated XML file manually (using notepad or similar).

Dan

 

[Spock]

Thanks Dan

I understand how to edit the priority, I'm just unsure how it affects it all. For instance, why does it go from 1.00 to 0.80?

Seems like no-one has a clear understanding of it, guess that's down to G and it's mystical sitemap interpretation.

 

[DanHarrison]

Hi, ah, sorry, didn't read your message properly.

The scale is from 1.00 to 0.00. 0 effectively means don't bother crawling it. 1 means crawl it as a top priority. The numbers are relative not absolute, so it means crawl stuff starting with the highest priority first.

Here's Google's definition (from https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html)

The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site. Valid values range from 0.0 to 1.0. This value has no effect on your pages compared to pages on other sites, and only lets the search engines know which of your pages you deem most important so they can order the crawl of your pages in the way you would most like.


The default priority of a page is 0.5.


Please note that the priority you assign to a page has no influence on the position of your URLs in a search engine's result pages. Search engines use this information when selecting between URLs on the same site, so you can use this tag to increase the likelihood that your more important pages are present in a search index.


Also, please note that assigning a high priority to all of the URLs on your site will not help you. Since the priority is relative, it is only used to select between URLs on your site; the priority of your pages will not be compared to the priority of pages on other sites.

In my opinion, changing the priority has no significant effect. The fact that your values are around 0.8 rather than 0.9 is irrelevant. If you make a page a 0.9 priority, then it just means you rate it more important compared to pages set at 0.8. However, I doubt you'll get any observable difference if you changed the values near the top of the list.

Dan

 

[Spock]

Thanks for digging that up Dan. I have tweaked 3 page priorities and will see if that shows any noticeable effect.

 

[DotNetWebs]

Guys, Google says use a sitemap if your site has dynamic content, which I have been told means pages generated by a database.

My site is spidered well but this is probably because of the sitemap!

I think what they are talking about is complex [often changing] URLs that contain many query strings etc.

By using techniques such as URL Rewrite is perfectly possible to generate pages with static, semantic URLs, If you do this Google has no means of 'knowing' that your content is 'database-driven'.

I have long since eliminated Google Site maps from Visit Horsham and it has not harmed my rankings at all. In fact they have actually increased but I doubt that has anything to do with the sitemap.

Regards

Dotty

 

[DanHarrison]

I'd just like to make the point that sitemaps have nothing to do with rankings. They exist purely so that Google/search engines knows what pages you want indexed/crawled.

Dan

 

[Spock]

I'd just like to make the point that sitemaps have nothing to do with rankings. They exist purely so that Google/search engines knows what pages you want indexed/crawled.

Dan

Yes but if a sitemap helps Google crawl all of your pages then more of your site content is indexed, and we all know what more content means...prizes!

 

[DotNetWebs]

Yes but if a sitemap helps Google crawl all of your pages then more of your site content is indexed...

Exactly. The only reason I introduced a site map originally was to try and move my important pages out of the supplemental and into the main rankings.

That worked so my rankings clearly did increase for those pages at the time. Now I have all my target pages in the main Index I can safely remove the sitemap without it adversely affecting my rankings.

Regards

Dotty