Google ranks my sitemap.xml instead of blog post

[KentR]

Hello,

For some reason Google shows sitemap results when i search for my blog url

website.com/blog/postwhy is Google ranking my sitemap but not a post, especially when i search for full URL?

Thanks

[TakeshiYoung]

Maybe the blog post hasn't been indexed yet? Try taking a sentence from the article and searching for it in Google and see if it returns any results.

[KentR]

Yes it hasn't been indexed, hmm that is strange, this blog post was posted a while ago,

[MattAntonino]

"When I search for my blog url"

If you're searching

website.com/blog/posttitle

Then your sitemap is a relevant source of that post.  In fact, probably the most reasonable result for your link other than the link itself..  Think about it like this - you're searching as if your URL is a keyword.  Your "keyword" is on that page (likely the link you're searching for is on your sitemap).  So Google returns a relevant site that has your "keyword" on it.

Note that this isn't the same as searching

site:website.com/blog/posttitle

It's interesting that it's returning the sitemap not the post but it may have to do with your settings on the post.  For instance, if you had noindex on the post, your sitemap should come up #1.  If you don't, that's curious at least.  But yes, it makes sense.

[ChrisDeGraff]

Hi Kent,

It sounds like your sitemap's link is included in another sitemap file or linked from a page. According to my research,you can add a X-Robots-Tag header to your .htaccess file. This is an old discussion, but I believe still relevant: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3971249.htm

Thanks,
Christine DeGraff