The Google Forum

**kline11** · 03-08-2011, 08:46 PM

I just stumbled accross the fact that Google is indexing sitemap.xml files and showing them in the SERPs. They are showing the top two urls from the sitemap.xml file in search results as the title with others as the description??? No big deal, but seems a little odd as there is no purpose for these in the search result pages.

**gotlivechat** · 03-11-2011, 03:09 PM

I can't say I've ever seen sitemap.xml files in SERPs. What example can you provide?

**kline11** · 03-11-2011, 05:02 PM

Just search Google for inurl: your domain /sitemap.xml

**Benmoore47** · 03-16-2011, 02:23 AM

I will check this out and see if its really showing.

Thanks!

**Genite** · 03-16-2011, 04:13 AM

Can you give me any example and explain it briefly?

**Benmoore47** · 03-17-2011, 03:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Genite

Can you give me any example and explain it briefly?

What do you want to know here?

**Sierra Charlie** · 03-21-2011, 07:42 AM

haven't seen this before. Would you be able to leave a link to the Google SERP on which you was this. Would like to see it myself.

**kline11** · 03-24-2011, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sierra Charlie

haven't seen this before. Would you be able to leave a link to the Google SERP on which you was this. Would like to see it myself.

It's toward the bottom of page 1:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%...aqi=&aql=f&oq=

**chrishirst** · 03-24-2011, 06:39 PM

It's one of the URIs located on the domain/parent URL, so searches for all pages on the site/domain WILL show the sitemap URI.

**kline11** · 03-24-2011, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

It's one of the URIs located on the domain/parent URL, so searches for all pages on the site/domain WILL show the sitemap URI.

Yes, but I discovered it originally just searching for "searchbliss" and it was listed #3...not that this really matters. My question is WHY would Google index the sitemap for their SERPs? There is no point.

**chrishirst** · 03-25-2011, 03:35 PM

A link to the sitemap must have been found somewhere, the same thing occurs with pages that are blocked by robots.txt.

**StoneWilson** · 04-01-2011, 05:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

A link to the sitemap must have been found somewhere, the same thing occurs with pages that are blocked by robots.txt.

I blocked TAGS, but still, there are lots of tags in the list when I use "site:",

**Shey** · 04-01-2011, 07:08 AM

update your sitemap

Code:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">

Previous versions of the schema (for example, Sitemap Protocol 0.84) are now deprecated.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

command robot not to cache it and submit a removal request via webmaster tools.

check for links to your sitemap

**chrishirst** · 04-01-2011, 07:37 AM

Quote:

disallow in robots.txt

Wouldn't disallowing the XML sitemap from being requested by the very useragents that it is meant for be somewhat self defeating??

**Shey** · 04-02-2011, 01:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Wouldn't disallowing the XML sitemap from being requested by the very useragents that it is meant for be somewhat self defeating??

Command the robot not to cache sitemap.xml instead of using disallow in robot.txt. Disallowing the robots to crawl sitemap is totally WRONG. It is a must to allow the xml files to be crawled while using an X-robots-Tag: noindex among the server response headers.

Use this to prevent robots from indexing the page even if there are links to that page

Code:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">

I do not see the noindex tag in your sitemap.xml

If you have inserted the noindex tag but the page is still appearing in results, it's probably because Google robot haven't crawled your site since you added the tag.

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=93710

This is Google's cache of http://www.searchbliss.com/sitemap.xml. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on 27 Jan 2011 20:21:03 GMT.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ml&btnG=Search

FYI:

There are links to your http://www.searchbliss.com/sitemap.xml from themecraft.net that are dofollow

http://themecraft.net/www/searchbliss.com

**chrishirst** · 04-02-2011, 10:12 AM

You cannot add a robots meta to a XML file, it would break the structure of the XML.

Quote:

Command the robot not to cache sitemap.xml instead of using disallow in robot.txt. Disallowing the robots to crawl sitemap is totally WRONG. It is a must to allow the xml files to be crawled while using an X-robots-Tag: noindex among the server response headers.

Somewhere along the way you are COMPLETELY misunderstanding the use of an XML sitemap.

1/ The XML sitemap HAS TO BE INDEXED and CACHED to allow it to be used.

BTW Removing a line from your post to make it appear as it you never posted a particular statement, is not very professional!!!

**sachinxx** · 04-03-2011, 08:42 AM

Chill, I don't think that It'll create any problem.