Sitemaps for theirs XML speech protocolare not intended for “human” users of a website. This means that if they are not experts in SEO or development, no visitor to a website will access the sitemap and is therefore not a factor that affects the user experience or the Google EAT.
Sitemaps are written in XML language and are used to categorize and organize content for search engine robots and spiders, not for the user.
This problem arose on Twitter after an article stated that “a good looking sitemap brings a better user experience”, which translates to: “A good sitemap improves the user experience.”
Below we see the tweet:
“A nice looking XML sitemap makes for a better user experience.” Ps♂️ https://t.co/6d9yuepDWG
– Pascal Birchler (@swissspidy) August 14, 2020
Google expert Gary Illyes responded to this tweet and stated that sitemaps with the following tweet have no impact on the user experience. He also pointed out that the original article was a disaster:
I will say no too. This whole thread is a train wreck imo
– Gary ly 理 ／ 경리 Illyes (@ethod) August 15, 2020
Finally, John Mueller, a Google SEO expert, stated that sitemaps don’t detract from the user experience and that a user who had to access a webpage’s sitemap would have a terrible design. Below is Mueller’s tweet:
As someone who has spent way too much time creating XSL files for sitemaps (https://t.co/XqhCR9VEvk says o_O 15 years ago) your website is terrible when your users need to look at your sitemap file .
– 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 15, 2020
What is a sitemap?
XML sitemaps are text files that contain a List in XML format of all pages, categories, images and tags that make up a website. These files are used by search engine robots and spiders to crawl and find information on a website, and to index and position it where it belongs.
The XML language used to structure the information in the file is intended for robots and spiders. This language has become the standard and is used by all the major search engines like Google, Yandex, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
These protocols provide search engines with information about websites such as: For example, the URLs of each page, the date the pages were last modified, the frequency of changes, or the relative importance of a page in relation to the other pages on the website. . A sitemap does not guarantee that search engines will always index all of the pages it contains It is advisable to have one.
