I'm confused about sitemap.xml or sitemap.html, please suggest me which is better?

Depends on what you want to use them for.

 

An HTML sitemap harks back to the day when navigation on websites was limited and it provided a means for people to find all your pages. It's redundant if you have structured your site properly.

 

An XML sitemap may be used by the search engines to identify hard to reach pages, set priorities and inform the search engines of new contents. It's redundant on most sites if you have structured your site properly.

 

Note: a poorly built xml sitemap can harm your ranking.

I'm confused why anyone would spam this forum when they don't have signature links or anything

I think XML sitemap is better comparison then HTML because xml sitemap is easily to create through sitemap generator. HTML sitemap is basically long process and minimum used HTML sitemap.

Personally I use both as a safety net and in the case of xml for insight. Hooking up your xml in webmaster tools is vital, regardless on structure. I was consulting for a larger company last week where the xml highlighted one of their problems which was bloat in the index. Their xml sitemap said there should be 302 pages, yet Google knew of 3,147 pages, alarm bells time. Had it not been for the xml sitemap this data would not have been available. How many clients actually know how many pages their site has?

 

Edit: If your site has a cms with a db then dynamic xml and html versions are a doddle.

Edited October 29, 20169 yr by BrowserBugs

But (and this is a tested fact) a badly built xml sitemap can hurt your ranking if you don't use the priority attribute properly. Most automated sitemap generator don't allow the priority to be set, everything defaults to 0.5.

But (and this is a tested fact) a badly built xml sitemap can hurt your ranking if you don't use the priority attribute properly. Most automated sitemap generator don't allow the priority to be set, everything defaults to 0.5.

 

You don't have to use the priority and also priority just like canonical I would say is a suggestion to the crawler, crawlers also take into account breadcrumbs, url heirachy, total internal links and more. But here's Ze'Googles viewpoint.

Google may say that but if you don't set a priority your ranking will be affected if your site has already been indexed. If it's a new site when you remove the sitemap after indexing ranking often improves. I've tested this a lot.

Google may say that but if you don't set a priority your ranking will be affected if your site has already been indexed. If it's a new site when you remove the sitemap after indexing ranking often improves. I've tested this a lot.

 

Hmm can you clarify a little, were there any other variables or changes made or was it simply had xml map for 4 months, took it out and rank increased? Was the test...

1. A new site launched (on fresh domain) with an xml sitemap which had the priority set and then was removed (inside a few months)?
2. As above but where the priority had not been set?
3. A new site launched on a pre-existing and in use domain which had the priority set?
4. As above but where the priority had not been set?

TBH I've never seen this effect, not discounting your trials but I don't remove the xml sitemaps as the are key as I pointed out before to identify structure issues with loose urls.

The primary test is a live site that ranks well across a whole range of keywords. I added an auto generated XML sitemap and when google next indexed the site ranking dropped. I removed the sitemap and ranking was restored.

 

A new site with an autogenerated sitemap was indexed and ranked. I was left alone for a while and the sitemap was removed. The next time the site was indexed there was upward movement of some of the key pages (because of the internal linking).

 

A properly formatted sitemap with priorities set didn't affect ranking.

 

Of course there are many more things that could affect ranking but each time the test is run (about every 6 months) ranking is affected if the priority is not set.

 

Note: on each site internal linking has been optimized to boost specific pages. So it's likely to be the combination of internal linking and lack of sitemap priorities that make all the difference.

Interesting, so site maps without priorities are better or worse? I figured tampering with priorities against hierarchy would be worse than not giving a priority, the same as giving a fake last modified date, if I was a crawler and the priorities were the polar opposite of the hierarchy then I would think something fishy was going on.

 

If you look at a shop for example with hierarchy then in theory the product details page would be the weakest, it's what a lot of auto generators do, they base it off the depth of structure, so with Home > Shoes > Women > Product they might give the product a 0.4, however the product is the reason the rest exist, the very thing the user came to the site to buy, the categories are simply viewpoints to the product possibilities the user could want, but this is hierarchy and crawlers assume and pass down search terms and weight partly due to quantity of view, so in this case they guess that Product is for women, and the product must be a shoe.

Edited November 2, 20169 yr by BrowserBugs

it should be sitemap.xml

If you build a website with good internal linking pointing to the key pages, Google will use this information during the indexing process.

 

In the case of the shoe shop, the category pages are the most important because of how they lead to individual products. The product pages may be the cash generators but the category pages are ones you want to rank. So you fix the internal links to boost the category pages.

 

If your sitemap has all the priorities set to 0.5 Google will use this information and ignore your carefully optimised internal linking. Google does this because you have told them no page is more important than another. This is why the 'about us' or 'T&C' pages often rank higher than a products or category page.

 

If you set the priority for each page (or sets of pages) and it's in conflict with the signals Google gets form the internal linking then Google will just have a guess as to what you want.

 

But set the priorities properly and everything aligns and Google is happy.

 

However....

 

If a site is indexed and ranked and new content is pinged to google and linked internally the sitemap becomes superfluous. Google even suggests this: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en

 

Note paragraph 2:

 

Also, your sitemap can provide valuable metadata associated with the pages you list in that sitemap: Metadata is .... the importance of the page relative to other URLs in the site.

That tells me that Google takes particular notice of the priority and why it should never be left in the default state.

If you build a website with good internal linking pointing to the key pages, Google will use this information during the indexing process.

 

In the case of the shoe shop, the category pages are the most important because of how they lead to individual products. The product pages may be the cash generators but the category pages are ones you want to rank. So you fix the internal links to boost the category pages.

 

In the case of the shoe shop the natural hierarchy will pass the importance simply via relational internal links via breadcrumbs. E.g. An item page about 'Jimmy Choo Red High Heel shoes' will cast a vote for each parent via the breadcrumb chain. I can see what your saying though, in the instance of shopping baskets, terms, contact they will all gain a tonne of internal links by default, however nofollow the links and weight is not passed to mess with the natural flow, I guess similar in this regard to priorities.

 

Back to priorities, what scale levels do you normally use for each level? E.g 1.0 - 0.1 or just 1.0 to 0.7 (3 tiers). Do you 0.1 the really low pages like terms etc? To be honest I've never seen a terms page rank vs other pages on a site.

Edited November 4, 20169 yr by BrowserBugs

 

HTML sitemap are designed for the user to help them find content on the page. XML sitemap is outline structures of your site, and XML format is understood by search engine bots only.

 

HTML sitemap are designed for the user to help them find content on the page. XML sitemap is outline structures of your site, and XML format is understood by search engine bots only.

 

I think that's correct. HTML is used for normal users have a overall look about the site while XML version is used for search engine bots crawling data

Both XML and HTML sitemaps help search engines crawl your site. The main difference being that a HTML sitemap helps visitors gain a comprehensive understanding of your site, while XML more specifically caters to the search engines. When you add new pages or content to your site, you can use XML sitemaps to notify the search engines.

Because Now a days our main focus on User friendly websites. So we should use both sitemap.xml as well as sitemap.html.