Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Priority Attribute in XML Sitemaps - Still Valid?
-
Is the priority value (scale of 0-1) used for each URL in an XML sitemap still a valid way of communicating to search engines which content you (the webmaster) believe is more important relative to other content on your site?
I recall hearing that this was no longer used, but can't find a source.
If it is no longer used, what are the easiest ways to communicate our preferences to search engines? Specifically, I'm looking to preference the most version version of a product's documentation (version 9) over the previous version (version 8).
Thanks!
-
Thanks Peter, I appreciate you tracking that down!
-
Here is it:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-priority-change-frequency-xml-sitemap-20273.htmlJust as John Mueller suggest you should use lastmod attribute to indicate change http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html and then you can do sitemap ping to Google for reindexing. This is easy http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=URLOFSITEMAP.xml and it's allowed https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669?hl=en
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?
Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz3 -
How long after https migration that google shows in search console new sitemap being indexed?
We migrated 4 days ago to https and followed best practices..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
In search console now still 80% of our sitemaps appear as "pending" and among those sitemaps that were processed only less than 1% of submitted pages appear as indexed? Is this normal ?
How long does it take for google to index pages from sitemap?
Before https migration nearly all our pages were indexed and I see in the crawler stats that google has crawled a number of pages each day after migration that corresponds to number of submitted pages in sitemap. Sitemap and crawler stats show no errors.0 -
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
Redirected Old Pages Still Indexed
Hello, we migrated a domain onto a new Wordpress site over a year ago. We redirected (with plugin: simple 301 redirects) all the old urls (.asp) to the corresponding new wordpress urls (non-.asp). The old pages are still indexed by Google, even though when you click on them you are redirected to the new page. Can someone tell me reasons they would still be indexed? Do you think it is hurting my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0 -
Where is the best place to put a sitemap for a site with local content?
I have a simple site that has cities as subdirectories (so URL is root/cityname). All of my content is localized for the city. My "root" page simply links to other cities. I very specifically want to rank for "topic" pages for each city and I'm trying to figure out where to put the sitemap so Google crawls everything most efficiently. I'm debating the following options, which one is better? Put the sitemap on the footer of "root" and link to all popular pages across cities. The advantage here is obviously that the links are one less click away from root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" (e.g. root/cityname) and include all topics for that city. This is how Yelp does it. The advantage here is that the content is "localized" but the disadvantage is it's further away from the root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" and include all topics across all cities. That way wherever Google comes into the site they'll be close to all topics I want to rank for. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Sitespeed: Do images require width and height attributes?
Currently working on a sitespeed issue, and was wondering if not having width and height for images actually do cause a problem. We simply Photoshop the resolution we require for the image and add it to the page as is. I though this would actually speed it up, but I am getting from www.gtmetrix.com that we should have them. What's your experience? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cyberlicious0 -
Xml sitemap advice for website with over 100,000 articles
Hi, I have read numerous articles that support submitting multiple XML sitemaps for websites that have thousands of articles... in our case we have over 100,000. So, I was thinking I should submit one sitemap for each news category. My question is how many page levels should each sitemap instruct the spiders to go? Would it not be enough to just submit the top level URL for each category and then let the spiders follow the rest of the links organically? So, if I have 12 categories the total number of URL´s will be 12??? If this is true, how do you suggest handling or home page, where the latest articles are displayed regardless of their category... so I.E. the spiders will find l links to a given article both on the home page and in the category it belongs to. We are using canonical tags. Thanks, Jarrett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarrett.mackay0 -
Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes?
We have a massive site that is having some issue being fully crawled due to some of our site architecture and linking. Is it possible to have a XML sitemap index point to other sitemap indexes rather than standalone XML sitemaps? Has anyone done this successfully? Based upon the description here: http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index it seems like it should be possible. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CareerBliss0