Be careful with Google Sitemaps

80% of my site is now URL only

[brokenbricks]

Doing a site: search on one of my sites is showing roughly 80% of all my pages have become URL only.

What can be causing this? About two weeks ago I decided to try Google Sitemaps hopefully to better expose my pages, bad mistake. I don't know what happend, but I can't help think I'm missing a bit of traffic with all these URL only listings.

What is the real cause of URL only listing? Why does it happen and what can I do to remedy it?

[webdude]

Sometimes URL only is an indication that the site has been crawled but the data is yet to be included in the SERPs. Not sure about SiteMaps, but when a site is crawled, the first bot makes note of the new pages. A second but comes and does a crawl of those pages and the data is added to the index. It is the time between the first crawl and the second in which pages may be displyed as URL only. You might have to wait a bit to see the final result.

[abates]

I have a subdomain where pages seem to occasionally turn URL only, then come back 10 days later when Googlebot crawls them again. It's like the indexed text is being expired from the database, leaving the page was URL only. This seems to happen when Googlebot hasn't visited a URL for some time.

Whether this is because the pages are too low in PR (they're around 2-3PR), or some other factor, I'm not sure.

Is Googlebot still crawling your site merrily?

[abates]

I should add that I'm using sitemaps on that subdomain. I'm monitoring it, but it's too soon to see if there's a long-term improvement...

[paulk]

I want to say I am experiencing the SAME EXACT problem with half of my pages right now as of 1 week ago. I've also been using Google Sitemaps, I am not sure whether that could of caused it. Perhaps GoogleGuy could comment on what the reason could be?

[aeiouy]

Likely something else.. I saw this on one of my sites too but it has had sitemaps on it for a long time.

I think it is is prudent to not jump to wild conclusions. IE if you don't have any evidence to support that Sitemap is the cause of this it is not wise to present that as the most likely cause of your problems.

[DamonHD]

Hey!

Waiting until >=1 facts are in before jumping to conclusions?

How does that work?

Rgds

Damon

[arran]

In my experience, URL-only signifies duplicate (or not enough) content in the majority of cases. Last week I noticed I had 8 URL-only pages. I chose one of these pages at random and added a couple of new paragraphs (originally it didn't contain much content). It was respidered and this morning the page is now listed normally. The other 7 remain URL-only.

arran.

[rfontaine]

Personally I like to jump to conclusions on segments of data that are too small to reach any conclusions on.

[Rosamunda]

Hi there!

Iīm new here, and I think it is happening the same thing to me... is it possible that this could be just a tiny issue that will not last more than a few days?
Iīm starting to freak out...!

Iīm using SSI on a webpage based on the Content Management System "NucleusCMS" (www.nucleuscms.org).
The links are all url friendly, and until a month ago I didnīt noted any problem. Now Iīm not appearing in the first pages at Google results!

(Iīm from Argentina, ejm... sorry about my unaccurate english!)

Rosamunda

[arran]

Hi Rosamunda,

Although your URLs are SE friendly, do you have enough unique content on the affected pages?

arran.

ps. There's nothing wrong with your English :)

[paulk]

this problem is happening to me, a lot of pages are 300+ words of unique text, so the duplicate content theory sounds like its not something that would cause this in my case.

Its funny, because the test datacenter everything is fine on there and has even more pages indexed in there with good results.

Strange

[Rosamunda]

Many thanks for your reply! :)

Yes, each page has different content.
My webpage is fullfilled with legal content, and each item shows articles with several paragraphs in it...
I just donīt get it... until a month ago I could say I was at the top PR... and now I donīt.

Could it be that my pages are .php instead .html?
Now they are all generated with a database, and I donīt have to create each page manually...
I use a blog system, could this be the cause?

Chuif!

Rosamunda

[stinkfoot]

Use MSN .. google doesnt work