XF 2.1 Do Sitemaps make a difference?

[Jon12345]

My forum has been running for 20 years and I don't have a sitemap. Switched from vBulletin 3.8 to Xenforo a couple of days ago, so wondering if I should generate a sitemap.xml and submit to Google Search Console.

Do they make much of a difference? Has anyone got data to show they increase the number of urls indexed?

I've read that Google's technology is so good nowadays that it spiders everything anyway. What is true?

 

[arn]

Sitemaps don't make a dramatic difference... but it comes down to "why not"?

The main benefit probably comes from discoverability for Google and crawl priorities. Google only spends so much time on a given site. So might as well point it to the new stuff via sitemap than necessarily letting Google waste time trying to find stuff on its own. It's probably a mild benefit, but again -- why not? It won't hurt.

arn

 

[Jon12345]

I notice in the settings that Xenforo automatically submits sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing. But I see nothing under my Google Search Console regarding submitted sitemaps.

Should I also add one there? Why isn't it showing as submitted?

 

[HotRodCarts]

Yes, you should submit it.

 

[Jon12345]

Do I submit mysite.com/forums/sitemap.xml?

I had a look at sitemap.xml and it links to lots of smaller sitemaps, so do I just submit that parent sitemap?

 

[arn]

Do I submit mysite.com/forums/sitemap.xml?

I had a look at sitemap.xml and it links to lots of smaller sitemaps, so do I just submit that parent sitemap?

Yep. Just the parent