Sitemap Priority and Frequencies

rakesh2kumar said:

Are sitemap priority (0.00-1) and crawling frequency still important for google bots ?

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ReddApple said:

Google has indicated that they do not use the priority and change frequency information in XML sitemaps to schedule their crawl.

According to Google's guidelines, the priority field is optional and the search engine does not adhere to the frequency that you suggest. They use a more complex algorithm to determine when and how often they should crawl a site.

This algorithm is primarily influenced by how often the content of a page changes, how important the page is in the overall structure of the site, and how easily the search engine bots can discover and crawl the page.

The primary purpose of XML sitemaps is to help Google discover pages on your website, especially if your website is new, if it has a large number of pages, or if some pages are not easily discovered through clicking links.

So, it's always best to focus on maintaining an accurate, up-to-date sitemap with all your important pages, rather than worrying about priority and change frequency.

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