Sitemap Folders on Search Results

[roipublic]

Hello!

We are managing SEO campaign of a video website. We have an issue about sitemap folders.

I have sitemaps like ** /xml/sitemap-name.xml .** But Google is indexing my /xml/ folder and also sitemaps and they appear in search results.

If i will add Disallow: /xml/ to my robots.txt and remove /xml/ folder from webmaster tools, Google could see my sitemaps? or it ignores them?

Will my site effect negatively after remove /xml/ folder completely from search results?

What should i do?

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Ahmet,

I've seen this a dozen times, somehow Google thinks site maps are in some way great content as they are putting them within the search results. But by using the Disallow in your robots.txt Google won't be able to find your sitemap, or at least they will provide you with an error because you excluded them.

Hope this helps!

[roipublic]

Hi Martijn,

I wonder if i block my sitemaps from robots.txt, could google bot reach my sitemaps?

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Ahmet,

You could give it at try by add the lines to your robots.txt for a second and testing your sitemap from within Google Webmaster Tools to see if it's working. I can't give you a definitive answer on this one. In the cases I handled I just accepted that these sitemaps were ranking for some long long long tail queries.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Ahmet

I don't think the sitemap indexed is an issue. Also I wouldn't block it with robots.txt - cause they won't be able to crawl it!

-Dan