Is a Rel="cacnonical" page bad for a google xml sitemap

[DoRM]

Back in March 2011 this conversation happened.

Rand:    You don't want rel=canonicals.

Duane:    Only end state URL. That's the only thing I want in a sitemap.xml. We have a very tight threshold on how clean your sitemap needs to be. When people are learning about how to build sitemaps, it's really critical that they understand that this isn't something that you do once and forget about. This is an ongoing maintenance item, and it has a big impact on how Bing views your website. What we want is end state URLs and we want hyper-clean. We want only a couple of percentage points of error.

Is this the same with Google?

[SteveWebb]

Yes, it is safe to assume that all search engines want your XML Sitemaps to be as clean and accurate as possible.

XML Sitemaps give you an opportunity to tell search engines about your most important pages, and you want to take advantage of this opportunity.

Think about it another way.  Let's pretend your site and Google are both real people.  In that hypothetical world, Google's first impression of your site is established through your site's XML Sitemaps.  If those Sitemaps are full of broken links, redirecting URLs, and rel="canonical" pages, your site has already made a bad first impression ("If this site can't maintain an up-to-date Sitemap, I'm terrified of what I'll find once I get to the actual pages").

On the other hand, if your XML Sitemaps are full of live links that point to your site's most important pages, Google will have a positive first impression and continue on with the relationship

[DoRM]

I see. but the rel="canonical" pages are good page.  I get the broken links and all that part but I guess i do not agree with rel="canonical" as much.  I can see their standpoint.  Do you do a lot with your site map and assign the different values to different pages?

[SteveWebb]

To clarify, when I say rel="canonical" pages, I mean pages that are using that link tag to point to another page (i.e., the pages that are NOT the canonical page).  These are also the pages that Duane and Rand were talking about.

I am not saying you shouldn't include pages that are included in the actual link tag.

Let's assume you have 3 pages: A, B, and C.

Pages B and C have a rel="canonical" link that points to A.

In this scenario, you would include A in your XML Sitemap (assuming A is a high-quality page that is important to your site), and you would NOT include B and C.

[DoRM]

Yes I understand that.  It is just a lot more work for us to do with our site map!  Thanks for your advice.

[SteveWebb]

You're very welcome.

And just try to think about it this way... every best practice you employ for your site is another best practice your competitors have to employ to keep up with you

[DoRM]

LOL thanks!