Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sitemaps. When compressed do you use the .gz file format or the (untidy looking, IMHO) .xml.gz format?
-
When submitting compressed sitemaps to Google I normally use the a file named sitemap.gz
A customer is banging on that his web guy says that sitemap.xml.gz is a better format.
Google spiders sitemap.gz just fine and in Webmaster Tools everything looks OK...
Interested to know other SEOmoz Pro's preferences here and also to check I haven't made an error that is going to bite me in the ass soon!
Over to you.
-
Thanks Big Bazza... I like the 'better' vs 'accepted' reasoning. Not too confrontational
-
Generally the .xml.gz format is the one stated in examples there are a few references to this here : http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php#index
Most sitemap generators that create both compressed and uncompressed sitemap files name them sitemap.xml and sitemap.xml.gz respectively. It also makes it clearer what the content of the zipped file is. I don't believe it is essential however, as you will direct tools such as google.com/webmasters to your xml sitemap - rather than expect it to find it of its own accord.
I always use the .xml.gz format when compressing. I would argue that (if both formats work) neither one is 'BETTER' than the other, rather one is more ACCEPTED than the other.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?
We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Large robots.txt file
We're looking at potentially creating a robots.txt with 1450 lines in it. This will remove 100k+ pages from the crawl that are all old pages (I know, the ideal would be to delete/noindex but not viable unfortunately) Now the issue i'm thinking is that a large robots.txt will either stop the robots.txt from being followed or will slow our crawl rate down. Does anybody have any experience with a robots.txt of that size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Should I use change of address when moving to subdomain
Hi guys So we had a domain that was only for one country, www.example.com 1 year later we decided to go to another country so we will have all the current website under a country subdomain like : ae.example.com we did a 301 redirect
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | awrikat
Should I perform a change of address action from www.example.com to ae.example.com ? please help
Thanks0 -
Should I use meta noindex and robots.txt disallow?
Hi, we have an alternate "list view" version of every one of our search results pages The list view has its own URL, indicated by a URL parameter I'm concerned about wasting our crawl budget on all these list view pages, which effectively doubles the amount of pages that need crawling When they were first launched, I had the noindex meta tag be placed on all list view pages, but I'm concerned that they are still being crawled Should I therefore go ahead and also apply a robots.txt disallow on that parameter to ensure that no crawling occurs? Or, will Googlebot/Bingbot also stop crawling that page over time? I assume that noindex still means "crawl"... Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntcma0 -
Using the same content on different TLD's
HI Everyone, We have clients for whom we are going to work with in different countries but sometimes with the same language. For example we might have a client in a competitive niche working in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Swiss German) ie we're going to potentially rewrite our website three times in German, We're thinking of using Google's href lang tags and use pretty much the same content - is this a safe option, has anyone actually tries this successfully or otherwise? All answers appreciated. Cheers, Mel.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dancape1 -
Is using dots in URL path really a problem?
we have a couple of pages displaying a dot in the URL path like domain.com/mr.smith/widget-mr.smith It displays fine in chrome, firefox and IE and for the user it may actually look better than replacing it by _ or -. Did this ever cause problems to anybody?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Any statement from google about it?
Should I change existing URLs? If so, which other characters can I use in the URL instead of underscore and dash, since in our system dash and underscore are already used for rewriting other characters. Thanks0 -
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical? Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories? What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical? Thanks in advance, C
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaCos0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1