Blog posts
📌 Minor update to the 2000 page limit
Thursday 11 September 2014
Minor update to the 2000 page limit A short time ago we increased the sitemap page limit from 1000 to 2000. This limit applies to the number of pages in a sitemap. In larger websites we sometimes find they have many errors in some cases 10,000s of links with errors e.g. a 404 not found.. In these cases our spider was often crawling 10'000s of pages before it hit the 2000 sitemap page limit.
📌 Current performance issues
Wednesday 3 September 2014
Current performance issues The last few months have seen a 40% rise in traffic and subsequent sitemap generation requests. This is great, but it also means that the service is heavily loaded and performing more slowly at peak times. We’re currently looking at potential improvements that can be made to the application and hardware upgrades, and will hopefully have more news soon. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate providing a service like this can’t be paid for by our passion alone.
📌 New gTLD support and URL limit increased
Monday 1 September 2014
New gTLD support and URL limit increased We’ve updated the domain validation to allow for new gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) which are longer than the more traditional ones.So whether you are a .com or a .photography you can use the sitemap generator. As well as this we have increased the sitemap url limit from 1000 to 2000 to cater for larger websites.
📌 HTTPS/SSL Google SEO and XML Sitemaps
Friday 8 August 2014
HTTPS/SSL Google SEO and XML Sitemaps Google recently announced that websites with SSL/HTTPS will gain you a minor ranking boost in an effort to improve online security. This gain is likely to be small to start off with to give webmasters time to adapt their servers and websites, but over time this boost is likely to increase making SSL a key part of your SEO strategy. What do you need to do?
📌 Baidu, Yandex sitemaps and fixes
Monday 4 August 2014
Baidu, Yandex sitemaps and fixes Our sitemaps have always been compatible with Yandex and Baidu. We’ve now added them to the ping feature for RSS sitemaps so that you can easily notify them about your sitemap updates. If you have other services that would be useful please feel free to get in touch. Some users were experiencing problems with the “download all” zip file containing empty files. We believe that issue is now resolved.
📌 What is the best sitemap format?
Tuesday 15 July 2014
What is the best sitemap format? Our sitemap generator produces a number of sitemap formats including HTML, XML and RSS, but which is the right one? The answer is all of them depending on the circumstances. Here are some quick thoughts on why you might use each format. HTML Sitemaps An HTML sitemap was traditionally to help users find pages in your website, but they are also great for helping search engines find your pages organically.
📌 Sitemaps and multiple domains
Tuesday 1 July 2014
Sitemaps and multiple domains We sometimes get asked by people why our sitemap generator doesn’t find all pages in their website. There can be a number of reasons, however one reason we have found is references to multiple domains within the same website structure, in particular homepages that reference a different domain to the one the user specifies for their sitemap.. We recommend you are consistent with your domains. Pick a primary domain and stick to it.
📌 What is a canonical page?
Saturday 21 June 2014
What is a canonical page? A canonical page is the preferred URL of a page or set of pages with duplicate or highly similar content. By adding rel=“canonical” to your pages you can tell search engines about the preferred content / page for a given page or set of pages …. Why use it? The rel=“canonical” element helps search engines reduce duplicate content. To help de-duplicate your content and prevent yourself from being seen to publish duplicate content you should include a canonical url for similar/the same pages.
📌 Filter and save your sitemap
Sunday 15 June 2014
Filter and save your sitemap In this latest release we’ve added features to make it easier for you to filter out urls and images you want to exclude from your sitemap using pattern based matching as well as the ability to save your sitemap settings. Filtering When using “more settings” option you can enter patterns of URLs to exclude for files and images. Use can use simple filter strings as illustrated below, or more complex regular expressions.
📌 What happened to the advanced sitemaps feature?
Saturday 31 May 2014
What happened to the advanced sitemaps feature? The advanced sitemaps feature was one that allowed you to generate your sitemap and then edit it online. This feature was a beta prototype which we discontinued some time ago. We embarked on a revamp of our website and spidering engine some time ago and maintaining the advanced editor along side the new code became inefficient. We took the decision to focus on our key services and get them right.