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Get more from the latest release
In response to your requests, our latest release expands some of the features of Google Sitemaps. Here’s a roundup of what’s new.
Increased crawl errors
Previously, we showed you up to 10 URLs for each error type. We now show all URLs we’ve had trouble crawling. We’ve also put 404 (not found) errors in a separate table from other HTTP errors.
Just choose an error type and either browse the table using the Next and Previous links or download the entire table as a CSV file.
Expanded query statsQuery stats show you the top 20 search queries that brought up your site in the Google search results (both when users clicked on your site in the results and when they didn’t), along with the average top position of your site for that query. Previously, you could view aggregate data across all properties and countries, as well as mobile-specific queries.
Now, you can view data for individual properties and countries as well. For instance, you can see the search queries from users searching Google Images in Germany that returned your site in the results. You’ll only see properties and countries for which your site has data.
Site owners can also view aggregate information for all properties and languages. Properties include Images, Froogle, Groups, Blog search, Base, and Local. More than 100 countries are available.
Previously, query stats were available for sites that were located at the top-level domain (for instance, http://www.example.com/). These stats are now also available for sites located in a subfolder (for instance, http://www.example.com/mysite/).
Increased number of common words
On the Page analysis page, we’ve expanded the list of words we show in the report of common words on your site and in external links to your site from 20 to 75 and we've removed http and www from the words we list.
Increased limit of sites and Sitemaps that can be added to an account
In response to requests, we’ve raised the number of sites and Sitemaps that site owners can add to a Google Sitemaps account from 200 to 500 — a direct result of a request from a Google Group member.
robots.txt analysis tool addition
Our robots.txt analysis tool is a great way to ensure that the robots.txt file on the site blocks and allows only what’s intended. We’ve added the ability to test against the new Adsbot-Google user agent, which crawls AdWords landing pages for quality evaluation. We only use this bot if you use Google AdWords to advertise your site. You can find out more about this user agent in the AdWords help center.
We want to know what you think
We are constantly looking to improve Google Sitemaps and appreciate the feedback we get from our Google Group, other places online, and at conferences. But we know that we don’t get to hear from everyone that way. And so, to gather more feedback, we’ve added a rating tool to each feature in Sitemaps. Tell us if you love the feature, would like us to improve it, or if you don’t find it useful. Simply click your choice beside each feature.
Webmaster help center updates
We recently updated our webmaster help center . Two new sections that you may find particularly useful are:
- Using a robots.txt file
- Understanding HTTP status codes
We've added a new section of help topics in the How Google crawls my site section. These topics include information on:
- How to create a robots.txt file
- Descriptions of each user-agent that Google uses
- How to use pattern matching
- How often we recrawl your robots.txt file (around once a day)
This section explains HTTP status codes that your server might return when we request a page of your site. We display HTTP status codes in several places in Google Sitemaps (such as on the robots.txt analysis page and on the crawl errors page) and some site owners have asked us to provide more information about what these mean.
The Sitemaps Google Group
If you use Sitemaps, you should check our our Google Group. The Sitemaps team monitors this community to learn about any issues Sitemaps regulars may be having, as well as about feature requests and suggestions for enhancements. In addition, the members are great about helping each other out. If you do post a question or issue to the Group, please include your site URL (and Sitemap URL if your question is about a Sitemap) and any error message you received. This enables other Group members to help you more quickly and helps the Sitemaps team troubleshoot issues. We greatly appreciate the Group discussions and use the feedback to make Sitemaps better.
Thanks for your participation and input!
Another update on the site: operator
We've fixed the issue with the trailing slash in site: operator queries. Queries for site:www.example.com and site:www.example.com/ should now return the same set of results.
An update on the site: operator
We've fixed the issue with site: queries for domains with punctuation in them. We are still working on site: operator queries for domains that include a trailing slash at the end (such as site:www.example.com/ ), so you may get better results for now by omitting the trailing slash in your queries. The Index Stats page of Google Sitemaps no longer uses the trailing slash for its queries, so you should see correct results when using this page.
Thanks for your feedback and patience.
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