Is it OK for a sitemap to appear as a "Top URL" in Google Webmaster?

[anilababla]

I'm using Google Webmaster (alongside other tools) to understand how Google is indexing my site.

One of the tools is "Content Keywords", where it lists keywords that Google sees as significant for your site. The keywords shown are generally fine, but when I click on an individual word, I am often seeing our sitemap as one of the "Top URLs" that the keyword is found on (our sitemap is at system/sitemap1.xml.gz) - is this OK?

Obviously I don't want to add the sitemap URL to robots.txt, but I also want to ensure that 'real' user-focused pages (e.g. our homepage) appear higher in the "Top URLs" list for the keywords, as I'm assuming this is an indicator of how the site is performing in search.

Any help appreciated!

[BenFox]

I wouldn't be overly concerned.

For some terms, especially product codes and the detail pages of your site there are probably only going to be three pages where that term appears. The product page itself, the page within the navigation that links to that page (normally a list), and the sitemap.

Your sitemap is probably heavily linked to across the site so it does kind of make sense that it would appear as one of the top URLs for a term.

The reason I wouldn't be overly concerned is that I would IMAGINE (and I could be totally wrong) that the top Pages list is generated by a very simple algorithm that doesn't reflect how the organic search algorithm sees your site.

[anilababla]

Thanks for the answer. However I'm still unclear on a few things so I thought I'd give some further info:

• We actually have two XML sitemaps - one for our main site including our forums (this sitemap is generated/submitted by a ruby on rails plugin) and one for blog posts and static pages (this sitemap is generated by a Wordpress plugin). The sitemap which is appearing as a "Top URL" is the first one
• There are actually no links to our sitemap anywhere on our site - the only way Google knows about it is because we automatically generate and submit it to Webmaster

I think the reason that it is appearing as a Top URL is because all of the page titles of forum posts are listed in the sitemap, and this is the only page where they are all listed on one page. So I think you are right about the 'simple algorithm' thing, but I think it's because of the frequency of the keyword in the sitemap, rather than because the sitemap is linked to from anywhere on the site (because it's not).

This brings me to a related question - is it bad having two separate XML sitemaps, and should I be linking to them somehow from the site?