Google site maps not refreshed?

Conficio · #1 (**permalink**) 09-12-2006, 02:30 PM

Hi there,
I noticed, that Google seemed to ignore a sitemap update on my site for about a week. Have experienced similar behavior?

Here is what happened. I changed the URL space to incorporate parameters like:

Code:

/something/sometopic?lang=en&p1=aaa&p2=bbb&p3=ccc
to
/something/some-new-topic/aaa/en/bbb/ccc

I made it live on Sept. 3rd and updated my sitemap.xml file accordingly. On Sept 11th, Google claimed it read the sitemap.xml file for the last time on Sept. 7th. but it still created 404 errors using the old URLs with parameters on Sept 10th.

That is three days after it claimed to have read my new sitemap.xml it still tried to reach the old URLs. Is the crawler queue that much delayed?

I look forward to your comments.

K<o>
P.S.: By the way Google keeps ignoring a tree of 2000+ pages of content for about a month now. It still indexes only ~70 pages of content that is 4 month there with various changes.

MaxPowers · #2 (**permalink**) 09-13-2006, 06:11 PM

/something/sometopic?lang=en&p1=aaa&p2=bbb&p3=ccc still exists, so when Google looks at it, it is still a valid URL.

Aside from the URLs on your sitemap, Google remembers where the pages 'used to be'. If they continue to get the 404's they'll drop them. As long as you aren't currently linking to the 404'ed pages, they shouldn't hold it against you.

* My bad, I thought this was a URL rewrite...
Perhaps /something/sometopic?lang=en&p1=aaa&p2=bbb&p3=ccc doesn't exist on your site, but if it was entered into Google, they will continue to check it until they realize that the 404 isn't a temporary error such as breaking a config file or accidentally removing the file.

They will, however, stop checking your page if the 404 continues and you will be ok as long as you aren't linking to a 404'ed URL

**incrediblehelp** · #3 (**permalink**) 09-13-2006, 06:11 PM

Just because your feeding them a new feed with new URLs doesn't mean they will stop crawling the old URLs and associating any ranking weight to those old URLs. Have you implemented 301 redirects from the old to the new along with your current sitemap changes?

SemAdvance · #4 (**permalink**) 09-13-2006, 06:14 PM

Hi

I would say everything is that delayed with Google, be it the crawler queue or the PR IBL Updates done every 90 days, data refreshes monthly and then when Google does make a mistake the time to resolve the issues are often a month or longer till inception.

They do need to establish trust....the more sites you've published over the years helps shorten this somewhat but the tougher the keyword term the longer it takes new sites to make it into the upper rankings.

I would break your tree into 20 pieces with 100 links or less maybe 21 pieces (mini sitemaps).... Remember Google does state to keep the links on a page to under 100....

make a sitemap of your sitemap pages above and feed that to Google.

Peace

just_me · #5 (**permalink**) 09-13-2006, 06:19 PM

I hope it's temporary though. I've been using the sitemap for a few months now and it just seems to come in waves. For a while things were pretty predictable. Add a page - wait about 5 days and see a new cache date. 5,6 days after that, check the rankings.
The fairly simple pattern was messed up over the holiday weekend. So, I'm hopeing it comes back soon. I figure it has something to do with the other strange stuff happened that weekend with what G. was showing in the link: search. I could be way off - but I figure their computer resources are limited just like mine. Sit back - let them finish with the backlinks (looking pretty standard across the data centers for a few days now) and hopefully everything will go back to er... normal?

kevan · #6 (**permalink**) 09-13-2006, 06:34 PM

Hi,
I don't bother with this any longer. I have several sites, some with google sitemaps and most without. I find those without the sitemap actually do better in the google search rankings.
Kevan

colr · #7 (**permalink**) 09-14-2006, 04:00 AM

Thats a falacy - site on site comparison is useless, since they are all about different things and they have different sizes/content.

The real test would be to add sitemaps to one of your existing high ranking sites and see how it improves. It will not go down in ranks because of site maps.

I've started using them on all our sites, since after a few tests I decided that it had a positive impact on site ranks (although they technically arent supposed to, according to Google).

Purple13 · #8 (**permalink**) 09-14-2006, 05:09 AM

I have to agree that the site maps have had a positive effect on search results.

I monitor several site maps, some where content changes every week, some where the content is pretty much static month after month.

The frequency indicator seems to be adhered to by Google, judging by the last time they look at the site map.

Before, Purple 13's news page never featured in search results. Now, with the site map, its news items do under the same specific searches.

I had heard that Google didn't get past the ? in url's. If that was the case, the site map has certainly overcome that particular issue, at least for Purple 13.