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Should I Exclude My Sitemap?

by The Expert
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I read somewhere that there is some SEO benefit to making sure that google only gets to your content on the "path" you want. I dunno why.

The discussion boiled down to the fact that you should exclude your RSS feed and your Archives from indexing by Google. Again, the reason was that you only want to have Google reach your content by the intended path.

Does anyone know why?

Also, does the same principle apply to my Sitemap?

If I have a link to my xml sitemap in the footer of my theme, should I nofollow it?

Excluding it wouldn't seem to make sense as you add the sitemap directly into webmaster tools...might not be good to exclude it and then tell google directly to go look for it.

Let me know some insights on this....as I don't understand the core concepts behind the thinking on these arguments.
#exclude #sitemap
  • Profile picture of the author Goatboy
    I wouldn't exclude it since Google advises that they like to see one. I wonder why you have a link to it in your footer? I don't recall seeing anything like that in my WP footer, but it may be there and I am simply unaware of it.
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  • Profile picture of the author bigcat1967
    Like goatboy said - G advices it - whenever they advise something - it's better to do it.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulgl
      People think google is not an intelligent search engine and will show
      certain useless pages. Well, they would if someone did search exactly
      for one of those pages. But since people don't, and even if it had
      something remotely interesting, google still could care less. They
      are not in the business of showing those pages in search results.

      People are starting to abuse the nofollow tag. It was never intended
      to be used to exclude pages. It was intended to avoid people getting
      link juice from spammed links, namely in blogs. That's it.

      Google indexes pages it feels are appropriate, and includes them in
      search results when appropriate. No need to help google. They don't
      need help, no do they ask for help. Well, that's not true. They asked
      for help in eliminating spammed links.

      There are other, appropriate ways to not have a page indexed. But
      even that is iffy. If google wants to index it, they will. If they don't
      want to index it, they won't. No matter what you do.

      Paul
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      If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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  • Profile picture of the author kaos
    Google seems to like RSS Feeds as well.
    Submit them to aggregators and ping them as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author oca101
    Banned
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