- Posted On: 12 Sept 2014
- Posted By: Crescentek
30 Jun 2017
To begin with, let us figure out what exactly a sitemap is, as also what does an XML Site Map stands for.Well, to be precise, a Sitemap is an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file that lists the URLs for a website, along with additional metadata about each of them.
Your website, incidentally, can hope to rank high only when the search engines receive all the information related to it. XML sitemaps do that service by way of providing all additional information to the search engines. However, some of the other benefits to using XML sitemaps are listed below for your information.
However, Google considers these additional information as just ‘hints’ while these surely prove beneficial to webmasters and search engines alike in many respect. Nevertheless, there are also a few Negative aspects of XML sitemaps that are recorded below.
Now that both pros and cons in regard to using XML sitemap have been brought to light, the reader may draw the guideline sans any external assistance or help. However, to evaluate the issue from a different perspective, an overview as provided by leading search engines Bing and Google are given below.
Sitemap protocol has been a standard matter that dates back to August 2006. However, lately, Bing and Google both have developed highly convenient Webmaster Tool dashboards that help website owners identify and fix errors or omissions. Among these two search engines, Bing probably is in favor of devaluing Sitemaps in the sense that if 1% of the URLs result in an error, it will go by status code 200.
Google, on the other hand gives clear guidelines as also limitations and a more robust error reporting method in terms of their webmaster dashboard. Apart from the regulation that only quality sitemaps should be submitted, it must also ensure that files should remain within limits provided by it as per the schedule given below
However, both search engines are in favor of supporting Sitemap Index Files. Instead of submitting multiple sitemap files individually, the sitemap index file eases the process of submitting numerous sitemap files of any type at one go.