changing sitmap.xml name

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changing sitmap.xml name

Steveboy

11:22 am on Mar 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

anyone think that changing the url and name of my sitemap to include a keyword would help increase my rankings?

for example www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml change to www.mydomain.com/keyword-sitemap.xml

vicky

4:51 am on Mar 27, 2009 (gmt 0)

no don't do it. you should not break the protocol. the sitemap should be placed on the root and named as sitemap.xml. once i did the same thing and the result was that though google was downloading the xml file (as shown by webmaster tools) it was not indexing any URL specified in the xml file

maxdomain

9:57 pm on Apr 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

it is a bad idea.

undercoverseo

4:56 am on Apr 22, 2009 (gmt 0)

There's no problem with changing the sitemap name. As long as you do a couple of things:

1) In your robots.txt make a reference to your sitemap by adding the line "Sitemap: [domain-name.com...] (without quotes)

2) When you change the sitemap name, remember to update it in Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo and MSN Live webmaster accounts.

The only reason I'd recommend a sitemap name different from the default is if you have more than one XML sitemap for your site. Otherwise, no real point in doing so.