Google Sitemap setup questions

[burns83]

Hey guys,

I took a look at our site's sitemap for the first time (I'm still a newbie!), and I have a few questions about things...

We have two sitemap indexes with one sitemaps in each. Shouldn't we have one sitemap index with the two sitemaps in them?

Also, should you include every page of your site that you want spidered in your sitemap? Our homepage is listed and then our deepest URLS, but not any of our category or subcategory pages. Shouldn't we include them in our sitemap, as well?

And lastly, our first sitemap starts by introducing the homepage, like:

- <url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2008-07-30</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

But our second sitemap just starts listing more deep URLs. Should both sitemaps start with listing the homepage?

Thanks for all your help, guys!

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:06 pm (utc) on July 30, 2008]
[edit reason] Use example.com; it can never be owned. [/edit]

[tedster]

Yes, you're right. If you've got so many urls that you need more than one sitemap, then you should create a sitemap index file for Google
- [google.com...]

No url needs to appear on both sitemaps. And if you only have one sitemap file, then you don't need a sitemap index.

Google says that listing all your urls will help them to spider your site more efficiently and better understand your site's structure. So yes, list every url that should be spidered, but know that there is no guarantee that those urls will all be spidered or included in the index.

[burns83]

Tedster, thank you!

We definitely want the pages spidered but won't hold our breath if they're not indexed.

We just don't want not listing them in the sitemap to hinder any spidering. Great!

[Andreas8]

Interesting info!