Google Webmaster Tools and Sitemap.xml files

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Mon, 22 Jun 2009 by Emily Mace

Google announced on Thursday last week that they had made some changes to Sitemap.xml files and how they handle them. Google is now able to handle 50,000 child sitemaps, this offers you the ability to create a lot more sitemaps for your site if you need them.

As Google’s maximum sitemap size is 50,000 entries or 10mb file size. This means if your site is larger than this 50,000 pages it is necessary to have a sitemap index page which references each sitemap.xml file you have on your site. Previously you could have 1,000 of these sitemaps listed in the sitemap index page. With more sitemap references now allowed in the index file you can cover more of your site’s content from one sitemap index file.
A sitemap.xml file is a good way to monitor what is on your site and what Google can see from your website as well as letting Google know about new pages or updates to pages on your website.

An additional benefit from an SEO point of view is that the XML feed file from your blog or news feed can also be uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools. As blog feeds automatically update each time you post a new item to the blog. Adding your Blog XML feed to the sitemap screen in Google can add to the SEO benefits of the blog.

However, we have been noticing that Google Webmaster Tools isn’t always showing information about the sitemaps it has listed in the Webmaster Tools for all sites, even when you resubmit them. So there might very well be a bug in the new Webmaster Tools. Hopefully over the coming week the initial bugs in the new look Google Webmaster Tools will be ironed out.