Auto-Include-Everything vs Curated Sitemap: Curate Above This Size
Two philosophies. Choose by index-bloat risk.
Auto-include all published URLs when:
— Small, every page is intentionally indexable, no faceted navigation.
Curated (rule-based inclusion) when:
— You have filters, tags, paginated archives, or thin auto-generated pages.
— Include only: canonical, 200, indexable, and content-complete URLs.
The inclusion gate to enforce:
— ✅ Self-canonical (not pointing elsewhere).
— ✅ Not noindex.
— ✅ Passes a thin-content floor (e.g. min word count or required fields filled).
— ✅ Returns 200.
Why it matters: a sitemap full of thin/duplicate URLs trains Google that your sitemap is low-quality, slowing crawl of the good pages.
Pass/fail:
— ❌ Zero noindex, canonicalized-away, or 3xx/4xx URLs in the file.
— ✅ Every listed URL is one you'd be happy to see ranked.
Definition of done: the sitemap is a curated list of your best indexable URLs, not a database dump.
The Sitemap SOP
@SitemapSOP
Auto-Include-Everything vs Curated Sitemap: Curate Above This Size
Этот пост опубликован в Telegram-канале The Sitemap SOP. Подписаться можно по ссылке: @SitemapSOP.