Should I remove these pages from the Google index?

[Robbern]

Hi there,

Please have a look at the following URL http://www.elefant-tours.com/index.php?callback=imagerotator&gid=65&483\. It's a "sitemap" generated by a Wordpress plug-in called NextGen gallery and it maps all the images that have been added to the site through this plugin, which is quite a lot in this case. I can see that these "sitemap" pages have been indexed by Google and I'm wondering whether I should remove these or not? In my opinion these are pages that a search engine would never would want to serve as a search result and pages that a visitor never would want to see. Attracting any traffic through Google images is irrelevant in this case. What is your advice? Block it or leave it indexed or something else?

[William.Lau]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. Google can tell what a sitemap looks like. If it bothers you, you can remove it from WMT. I don't believe you can put meta data that Google follows in an XML file.

[David-Kley]

A few questions:

How many pages back in a site search do you see these? Meaning if you do a site:www.yourdomain.com how many pages back do you see these appear? If it's like page 10 or more, I doubt a user would ever see the URL's at all.

Second, I am curious as to why you have an image sitemap, and went to that length to include images in your submissions, but didn't name the images in an SEO-friendly format? For example:

http://www.elefant-tours.com//gallery/keys-hotel/07_img_0949triesx.jpg

...is a young woman sitting at a table, getting served a drink. I would think that the image could be named "hotel food dining" or something of that nature. Just an idea, probably not a huge deal, but every bit counts. You have no idea what a user might type in to get to a site. Someone might skip web results altogether, and go straight to Google images to find what they are looking for, especially in the hotel industry. They will be looking for what appears to be the most relaxing, and luxurious experience.

You could always disable the plugin, and make one big image sitemap. The sitemap URL you listed shows the image son that particular page. In a "all-in-one" image sitemap, you would list out the images and image location (URL) individually. Might work out better for you, as Google would get the big picture (pun intended) all at once.

Hope this helps!

[Robbern]

Thanks for your responses.

I'm not too worried about users finding these sitemaps as they only appear very far into the search results. The only worry I had was that these pages could be seen as low-quality/thin pages of content. I guess David-Kley's suggestion of naming the images properly could kill two birds with one stone; Have relevant content indexed on these pages and perhaps attract a few more visitors through google image search. Thanks for the suggestion!