Google considering my sitemap.xml more relevant?

[DansSitesRScrewed]

Hi All,

I noticed now in my GWM (Google Index > Content Keywords) that for almost all the keywords we are ranking for, Google is considering our sitemap.xml file more relevant and is outranking almost all our other pages. But this is on almost all our keywords. The sitemap is always top 3.

Also, it seems as if Google is just ignoring pages that are so much more relevant. Example, our homepage is optimized for certain keywords, we used to rank top 5 across the board. Now for those keywords, Google is pointing to useless pages with zero content and really maybe only one instance of the keyword within the content.

Can someone tell me what I should do?

Dan

[goodroi]

I haven't spent alot of time on the content keyword report in Google WMT but I believe it is just looking at the raw number of occurrences including anchor text. I wouldn't use the term "relevant" when comparing url A to url B in this report.

Does your sitemap contain alot of keyword rich urls?

[DansSitesRScrewed]

Yes, all our URLs are optimized in the way of keywords. I'm just wondering if I should try to have Google NOT index the sitemap.xml. I know they need to crawl it, but not so sure about indexing it. I would think it is taking away from the other pages?

[lucy24]

<FilesMatch "\.(js|txt|xml)$">
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"
</FilesMatch>

Honestly, search engine. Do you really believe that any human, anywhere, is interested in the contents of my sitemap? And if anyone wants to read my scripts they can jolly well snoop manually, the way I do ;)

Add .log if you've got the kind of file structure where a robot might stumble across your raw logs.

[DansSitesRScrewed]

Thanks lucy24, would I want to put that in my vhost files on the server or where would I want to have this?

[lucy24]

Put it in the highest place where it works. In my case it's the shared htaccess in my userspace in shared hosting.

[DansSitesRScrewed]

lucy24, Do you think it would really matter in the way of SEO and rankings because Google is indexing the sitemap.xml? I mean don't you think Google would be taking this into consideration that everyone may have a sitemap and NOT to use it in their algos as a factor?
I just don't like seeing it in my GWM as appearing to be outranking all my pages.. :(

[Robert Charlton]

Dan, I'd do what lucy suggests with the X-Robots-Tag.

Also, please clarify... are you seeing any of these keywords rank for actual searches? If so, what kind of search?...

- a competitive search for the keywords in question?
- or a [site:example.com] search?
- or a [site:example.com keywords] search?

I don't spend much time in WMT either, but I doubt that this report is suggesting that your sitemap.xml is a problem. The WMT keyword lists I remember weren't terribly useful. This indicates, though, that you do have a problem with a penalty (as discussed in our site review forum in the Supporters area), and almost anything containing your keywords can outrank your penalized pages.

I've seen analogous issues reported by members here, with penalized sites, who search for something very specific on their sites and then get upset because one of those scraper "site report" sites is outranking them for their own meta description or whatever. The real problem isn't what's outranking you. It's that you've got link penalties and weak content that urgently need fixing.

I'd put the technical issue we're discussing here way down on the list. The underlying issue is your content and your inability to attract natural backlinks.