Sitemap Update Frequency?

[jesse-landry]

Hello,

My question today is regarding sitemaps. I'm often confused by this and because I am a bit obsessive I believe I may be giving myself more work than needed..

Basically my question is, do I need to update and/or re-generate my sitemap every time I make a change to the site? I mean, I must have to if I add a page, correct? And so in Google's Webmaster Tools, do I just delete the current sitemap and re-upload a new one for Google to crawl?

Is it possible to overdo this?

Any sitemap suggestions would be fantastic. I feel like there's been a few weeks where I've updated the sitemap daily and re-submitted it and I worry that might be hurting my site.

Thanks!

[Mike.Goracke]

As far as when to submit sitemaps, you do not "need" to even submit one. After your initial sitemap is submitted, as long as you have a strong interlinking structure in place, your new pages should be crawled. Submitting a sitemap when you add new pages is more or less a "heads-up" to Google saying, "I added new pages here... you should crawl them when you have time."

Now, if you remove pages from your site, you should also make sure that your sitemap reflects these changes. If you do not, you will start to get 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools.

I don't think you can overdo it; however, you would probably make less work for yourself if you only resubmitted when you are 100% sure you actually need to.

Does that make sense?

Mike

[jesse-landry]

That was exactly the answer I was looking for and makes perfect sense. I had a feeling I might be working too hard in that regard.

Thanks again!

[SEOAndy]

Also something to consider is that you don't need to re-submit the sitemap ever whilst your sitemap is in the same location and has the same title it always did. Google will on a regular basis fetch that sitemap without resubmitting.

I would say update the sitemap if you've a new page or deleted it - but its not a huge issue really if you are out by a day or 14 - unless your site is very busy with lots of visitors it's not that important to google, also I find they prefer natural crawling and finding than being told there is one new page - this said a whole section change is definitely worth updating it.

[jesse-landry]

appreciate the input thank you. makes sense - throw the new sitemap on the server and let it happen. will do

thanks again all