Every day that goes by, I become a bigger fan of setting up an XML Sitemap file for Google and the other search engines to chew on. I think Sitemap files are important for sites to take full advantage of being indexed in Google. Clearly, submitting a Sitemap file is just one small step you need to do to enjoy ranking well in Google. You can often submit a sitemap file and Google won’t index all your pages. We discussed this topic yesterday with My Pages Are Dropping Out of Google: What Do I Do?
What I find interesting is not only does a Sitemap help you tell Google about your pages, it also gives Google another document to index and include in their search results. Yes, Google may index your XML sitemap file and rank it in the search results. For example, a search on inurl:sitemap.xml returns Google’s XML Sitemap towards the top of the search results for me:
That being said, hundreds of Sitemap files are indexed and in the search results. They typically only come up for very specific searches, that likely won’t impact the normal searcher.
Two Google Group threads are discussing this. One, JohnMu of Google replied to, saying:
If you really don’t want them to show up in the Google results, you have a way out. Here is how according to JohnMu:
Is Google indexing your Sitemap file? Do you care?
