Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?

[poiseo]

My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky.

What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?

[ahsan88]

When you have a high number of URLS for both Mobile and desktop, it is recommend to create different site maps for every version and connect them together. This way google will be able to find every version of your website and as a result you will have more URLs crawled and Indexed in the google SERPs.

[poiseo]

Yes sure, I know that, but you didn't answer my question.

[katemorris]

What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?

Let me clarify, you want to know the pros and cons of putting all page versions in sitemaps, or just doing the english/desktop and letting Google figure it out.

List All Content in Sitemaps

• Pros

• If the sitemaps are set up in a logical fashion, this makes for an easy way to see indexation issues.

• You can use hreflang in the sitemaps rather than on the page. This reduces page code and ups page speed, albeit slightly.

• You are guaranteed that search engine will find all of the content.

• Cons

• Lots of sitemaps to make and maintain.

Sitemap just main content (desktop/english)

• Pros

• Easier to maintain.

• Search engines are much better today at finding most versions of content.

• Cons

• Run the risk of content not being indexed correctly.

• Some content might not be found and indexed.

• You could not easily verify indexation.

• If any onsite code was removed that told Google where to go, then the possibility of indexation issues increase.

Hope that helps answer your question!