What should be the size of a site map?

When is it too big?

[mrguy]

I'm curious as to the size of site maps that people with sites over 300 pages are using.

I've seen people say not to make the file over 100K and others say not to put more than 100 links per page for a site map.

How many links do some of you with large site maps have per page and has it been effective in getting those pages spidered?

Thanks!

[AthlonInside]

I think it is better to follow google guidelines but for myself I didn't because I have never see a sitemap which spilt into a few pages, I stuck all 130+ links in one page. No problem after a few updates. Shown as baklinks to the pages link too! :)

[garylo]

Google suggests not more that 100 links per page (I think there is a post by GG in regard to this). I've seen large sites split their site map into several different pages that include up to 100 links each.

[farside847]

My "map" has a network of about 650 pages with 100 links each. Completely crawled each month.

[Chef_Brian]

Yes site maps ...

I remember when I started my cooking/chef site I used a site map so that google would be able to find all my pages. However I got rid of the site map simply because by providing a good linking sturcture google will find your pages anyway. This also cuts down on page file size and you can devert your pagerank where you need it by linking more often to those pages that you want to see a boost in rank.

Currently my site is about 500 or so pages and has about 35 links on my home pages. I simply break up the sub pages into relevent sub topics which works well.

Brian

[John_Caius]

For the want of yet working out a better way to do it in terms of transferring PR, we have 20 pages with 1000 links on each page. The number of pages indexed by Google fluctuates with freshbot activity between about 12k and 20k but is seeming now to settle down around the 20k mark. In other words, we have all 1000 links on the page spidered.

[dwilson]

Currently my site is about 500 or so pages and has about 35 links on my home pages. I simply break up the sub pages into relevent sub topics which works well.

Chef_Brian, how deep a linking structure do you end up with that way? Have you had trouble with Google not spidering all the way to the bottom?

[mrguy]

Thanks for your experience!

I've finally have gotten to the point where I have more content and wanted to make sure it all gets spidered.

I appreciate all your help!

[Chef_Brian]

Hey dwilson,

I have about as many of four levels however most of my pages are on my third level down from the home page. Google has no trouble at all finding all pages on the site.

Brian