Sitemaps good or bad

[riospace]

I have been experimenting with Google sitemaps for 3 months now and have seen my numbers go down since using the sitemaps. Also, my new pages have not been getting indexed by Google. These new pages were not being indexed before I started using Google sitemaps, this is the main reason that I started using Google sitemaps. Why are the sitemaps not helping me?

This brings me to my main question, Google sitemaps good or bad?

[OutdoorMan]

(I have actually posted a similar thread for about a week ago)

I have read that the use of a sitemap (for Google Webmaster Tools) could be bad for newer sites.

Some SEO-guy wrote for instance in his blog that: based on his experience with Google Sitemaps, he won't reccomend the use of sitemaps (for Google Webmaster Tools) for new websites.

I don't know what to believe anymore. But so far my experience with Google (and some of their services) is that if Google tell you that a service or function might be helpfull, it isn't allways going to be helpfull.

[The Contractor]

Who knows about Google site-maps? Who uses Google site-maps? Oh..SEO's..hmm

[ALbino]

Who knows about Google site-maps? Who uses Google site-maps? Oh..SEO's..hmm

Exactly. I wouldn't touch Google Sitemaps with a ten foot pole.

[OutdoorMan]

Exactly. I wouldn't touch Google Sitemaps with a ten foot pole.

Do you mean Google Webmaster Tools (the service) or sitemaps in Google Webmaster Tools (the function)?

[ALbino]

Both. In fact, we got rid of Urchin once they bought it simply because we didn't want them knowing how much traffic we got from them and how we got it. That stuff is handy and all, but it also has the potential to backfire. I'm not saying it will, but it certainly could, and that's enough for me.

[Essex_boy]

I use them solely for SEO purposes, Ive found that Mr G crawls a site faster, I suspect that Mr G finds out about a site update quicker as well.

Its going to be a trade off between use to you and info that G can gather for its own purposes.

[Alex70]

google sitemap good or bad...?
I don't thing that is the right question.
Don't think sitemap can get you #1 or #100. If you do have problems after Big Daddy ( to me everything started there ) this easy tool want help you in ranking, but it wont hurt you as well. I do not know any tool that could actually hurt/help your ranking...
ah..ok...is a tool for seo..oops..they don't know that there are seo's out there...shhhh.

[riospace]

I have a Cron Job setup to generate a new sitemap every morning at 3am. I also have google automatically pinged when the sitemap is finished being generated. Is this too much? How often should I update my sitemap and ping google?

[netmeg]

I have 68 sites in my Webmaster Central account right now, and as soon as I get the time, I'll be adding maybe around another 100 or so for my hosting clients. I haven't seen any one of my sites tank in any fashion that I could even remotely pin on Google Sitemaps, and I'm reasonably sure it's helped some of the more complicated sites. For the larger sites, I have the sitemap XML file generated dynamically every time Google comes to pick it up. Works for me.

[dfrejw]

Since added the google sitemap I have seen my traffic fall 50% but have over 200 new pages indexed.

[fishfinger]

Google themselves say that sitemaps don't guarantee pages will be indexed. Since BigDaddy that depends on PR, although the changes to the Supplemental index recently have lowered the threshold somewhat.

I only deal with smaller sites - 1000 pages max - and build them so that all pages can be reached easily. They all get indexed fine w/out sitemaps.

If you are a large site with content being added daily (perhaps non-HTML content too) then a dynamic sitemap would make sense I guess for quick URL discovery.

No longer bother with it myself.

[dibbern2]

I wouldn't add new content without them. Quicker crawls, faster indexing, and no noticable negative effect on serps.

I think they are a very helpful in establishing your content for long tail searches. I usually get hundreds of visitors from these 'way before my pages start climbing in the serps for primary keywords.

[tedster]

We had two threads going on this topic - so I locked the other one [webmasterworld.com].

Just want to recap what I said in that other thread - essentially that all websites are not the same. If you have a couple hundred or even a couple thousand urls, that can be well handled with good site architecture.

However, if you run a larger site with hundreds of thousands of legitimate urls and lots of churn, then using Python to autogenerate an xml sitemap and ping Google can get you better spidering for the new pages.

[vero]

For a new site (less than a year)that has had a sitemap from he beginning (only updated when new pages are added), would you recommend removing it or just leaving it?