[Plugin: Google XML Sitemaps] How to hide the "human readable" XML

  • Resolved macksie

    (@macksie)


    13 years, 11 months ago

    Hi all,

    I don’t want to have the human readable XML showing up. I just want the XML sitemap to be doing it’s thing (interacting with the search engines) without being viewed by humans. It also keeps appearing in my listings – the ones where google shows several of your pages under your site in the search engine results.

    I don’t see why it’s needed, it’s ugly and out of keeping with my site, and I’m building my own handcrafted “human” version for my visitors.

    In short, I just hate it and want it to go away.

    Could someone please tell me how? Any settings I can turn on or off?

    Or any way to stop it being indexed/appearing in the search engine results?

    Or… any other ideas?

    Thanking you in advance!

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Arne

    (@arnee)

    13 years, 10 months ago

    Hi,

    Google should not include your XML files in search results. Could you please post the link to your site (or mail it to himself .. arnebrachhold .. de)?

    Best regards,

    Arne

    Thread Starter macksie

    (@macksie)

    13 years, 9 months ago

    Hi Arne,

    Thanks for replying and many apologies for the delay in giving you a link.

    My site is catminter.com

    The following appear in my search engine results:

    http://www.catminter.com/sitemap.xml.gz
    http://www.catminter.com/sitemap.xml

    I’m not sure if it will appear for you too, if you are viewing in google.de, but in Google.com if you just type “catminter.com” as your search query, the xml.gz is included in the pages sub-listed under my site name – UGLY!

    The sitemap.xml is also indexed and shown in search engine results, but I have many pages so that might not be so easy to see!

    *** PLEASE NOTE*** I currently have the plug-in deactivated, as I was hoping this would make these urls disappear.

    Please let me know if it is more helpful for you if I activate it again.

    Many thanks – and I look forward to your response. Help is much appreciated!

    Arne

    (@arnee)

    13 years, 9 months ago

    Hi,

    looks like Google will index all xml files since they might contain useful information.

    Check out this article about indexing of sitemap files:

    http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018761.html

    If you do want to have them removed from the index, you could have your server send a “x-robots-tag” HTTP header tag with the contents of the file. Since they all appear to be originating from a single script, I imagine adding this would be fairly easy. For more information on the “x-robots-tag”, please see our blog post.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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