Example of how important a site map is

A few weeks ago I was adding some code to my sites htaccess file. The new code did not work, so I uploaded a backup copy of my htaaccess file and overwrote the one I had changed.

But, I uploaded the wrong file. The backup file that I uploaded did not contain the code that the site map generator needed to run.

A couple of weeks go by.

I'am looking through my google webmaster tools and see an error on the site map. The last time the site map had been downloaded by google was about 2 weeks ago.

Ok, so I go into the site map generator logs and see its having problems making the site map every night.

Then everything falls in together. The htaccess file is checked, and sure enough, the code for the site map is missing. So I fix the sitemap fixed.

Here is the problem. While the site map generator was down, google delisted a lot of my pages. Oh, only about 150,000 - 160,000 of them. Not only were that many pages delisted, but my forum has lost 5% - 8% of its traffic and page views have dropped about 100,000 as compared to 30 days ago.

We are not talking a little bit of traffic, we are talking enough traffic to make you worry about what is going on.

Let this be a lesson to everyone that has wondered about how important a site map is - Google likes site maps.

 

Thanks for sharing this with us.

Are you running VBSEO also or just the sitemap generator?

I am running VBSEO in one forum and all others just on sitemap generator until version 4 comes in.

Also for next time if you are running VBSEO with sitemap generator there is a setting where it will send you an email twice per day about the status. It does get anoying after a while but would have saved you two weeks of decreased traffic

 

I'am using just the site map generator.

I get the emails, but after using the generator for so long, I dont read them anymore. Maybe if I would have read the notification emails I would have known about the problem sooner.

 

Wow, seems you were delisted pretty quickly. Never realized Google relied quite that heavily on the sitemaps!