Sitemap full of noindex URLs erodes sitemap trust
In 220 audited sitemaps, a median 9.3% of listed URLs carried a noindex or non-self canonical. Google reads the contradiction and trusts the whole file less.
— Sitemaps with noindex entries: 51.0% ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░
— Median conflicting URLs/sitemap: 1,200
— p90: 14,000
— Discovery rate of clean URLs in dirty sitemaps: ↓ 13%
The mistake: the sitemap is generated from 'all published rows' while indexability is decided elsewhere. The two drift apart.
Fix: a URL belongs in the sitemap only if it returns 200, self-canonicals, and is indexable. Generate the sitemap from indexability rules, not from the row count. Cleaned cohort lifted valid-indexed discovery by ↑ 16%.
So what: a sitemap is a recommendation list — don't recommend pages you've told Google to ignore.
Crawl & Render
@CrawlAndRender
Sitemap full of noindex URLs erodes sitemap trust
Этот пост опубликован в Telegram-канале Crawl & Render. Подписаться можно по ссылке: @CrawlAndRender.