No site map option? REALLY?!

What are you referring to as a sitemap, an XML file?

Seems like it should be to me

Please elaborate the argument for this to be built into core.

SEO people, and web site builders frequently state that sitemaps are an important part of helping search-engine spiders find all your public content which isn’t linked to from other pages on your site- especially things like landing pages, or split tested versions of a page.

It just seems to me that if WordPress aims to provide the most ideal platform for publishing on the web that this would be important, and a simple basic addition to general site settings.

Check this out:

1) Navigation
A site map provides an organized list of links to all the pages on your Web site. If visitors get lost while browsing your site, they can always refer to your site map to see where they are and get where they would like to go. Site maps allow your visitors to navigate your Web site with ease.

2) Theme
When visitors access your site map, they will learn a lot about your Web site within a very short period of time. A well constructed site map will allow visitors to easily and efficiently grasp the “big picture” of your site.

3) Search Engine Optimization
Since a site map is a single page that contains links to every page on your Web site, it is a very effective way to help search engine spiders crawl through your site with ease (see Helping Spiders Crawl through your Web Site). Since search engines rely on links to find the main pages of your site, a site map is a great way to get every page on your site indexed by the search engines. The more pages you have indexed by the search engines, the more potential you will have to reach a greater number of prospective clients.

4) Organization
A site map enables you to easily assess the structure of your site to see where your site is strong and where it is weak. Whenever you need to add new content or new sections to your Web site, you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration by glancing at your site map.

Doesn’t that seem like something that might be beneficial to most WordPress users as a standard option? What trouble is it to put a check-box to enable or disable a sitemap matching your public content?

Even google itself “highly recommends” that you use a sitemap. Here’s a video on it from Google: https://youtu.be/Gl3fyqJ6whY “These are especially useful for sites that feature dynamic, or a large and updated set of new and updated pages…” sounds exactly like WordPress blog sites to me.

Is there any risk to WordPress to implement this functionality? Not that I’m aware of. But is there a reward? Yeah, it will be easier for search-engines to find their users’ site’s content.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but what do you think?

Here’s another page, again by Google which mentions that

You can create a Sitemap based on the Sitemap protocol, or you can submit a text file or RSS/Atom feed as a Sitemap. How to create a Sitemap.

Now I don’t know if the built in WordPress feeds allow a full sitemap via RSS or not. Also I know that the inherent Jetpack plugin has “Enhanced Distribution” but the explanation for that is “Jetpack will automatically take the great published content from your blog or website and share it instantly with third party services like search engines, increasing your reach and traffic.” What do they mean by great? Does that mean only really popular content or everything?
Jetpack apparently is just using the WP.com firehose.

Enhanced distribution allows your blog’s public content to be included in the WordPress.com firehose.
The firehose is a stream of the public data (public posts, comments, etc.) that flow through WordPress.com (and Jetpack blogs that participate in Enhanced Distribution). The firehose is used by companies and people who are interested in public blog content. When these firehose users display content from your blog, they are required to link back to your blog.

So seemingly, not directly submitting anything to search engines, but relying more on a back-linking type of thing.

–I only ask because there doesn’t seem to be any information on www.remarpro.com about sitemap functionality being included, but perhaps it is via RSS. Can you tell me?

For a lot of bloggers, the blog is business related. That often means having things like landing pages, and split tested pages, which don’t come as part of the basic WordPress. But for the people who have add them via one of the many plugins or manually, they are public pages (though not usually linked to from the sites main content) and it would be a huge benefit to have them seen and crawled by search engines. Side-note: Perhaps Google is not smart enough yet to differentiate between pages being split-tested vs. duplicate content; but if the need to differentiate between the two ever gets recognized, then split tested page versions would also be a great thing to have crawled.

I’ll end my argument with a couple of quotes:

XML sitemap will not create any negative effect to your existing ranking. So, you have to go for XML Sitemap.

XML Sitemap can help you to measure total number of pages and existence of indexed pages. If your indexing value will go down so, you can drill down more to improve it.

One another thing, you can provide image information in your XML sitemap and that will help you to improve impression and clicks from Google image search.

And bigger picture is that, you’ll never be small … Your website will be big in future so, why should not start to follow standard practice of SEO to get maximum in future.

“Sitemaps are not a novelty. They have always been part of best Web design practices” ~https://moz.com

P.S. This article is also pretty informative, and perhaps the bit at the end about how Yahoo doesn’t accept xml site maps but instead takes submitted lists of links might be part the “enhanced distribution” in Jetpack. Or perhaps not. Who knows? But perhaps all these submission features should be included in WP or JP in the future.

Are you sure this is referring to an XML sitemap:

1) Navigation
A site map provides an organized list of links to all the pages on your Web site…

2) Theme
When visitors access your site map, they will learn a lot about your Web site within a very short period of time…

3) Search Engine Optimization
Since a site map is a single page that contains links to every page on your Web site…

4) Organization
A site map enables you to easily assess the structure of your site to see where your site is strong and where it is weak…

Please clarify, are you referring to an XML file as a “site map”?

The section you quoted was referring to just sitemaps in general – probably a user visible HTML version. But most of what I’m after is an xml sitemap as described by google. I don’t mind having to use plugins for visitors navigation sitemaps, the main thing I want to discuss is informing search-engines of site changes in as integrated a fashion as possible. The more automatic the better.

Also just another bit of info. from WordPress.com

WordPress.com automatically generates an XML sitemap for your website and supports webmaster tools validation through meta tags. Themes on WordPress.com generate the necessary markup on each page.

If it’s good enough for WordPress.com, why isn’t it good enough for www.remarpro.com?

WordPress.com doesn’t have plugins and so things must be built into core. It’s still not clear why you’re asking for this as opposed to using a plugin, why is this not plugin territory?

It could be. I just feel that it would be nice inclusion to wordpress as whole. Virtually every blogger would benefit from it and I think want it if they were aware of it as a non-intrusive option.

Why force users to find a plugin or follow a tutorial for something that is such a basic part of having your content found and updated? Plugins also have nasty tendency to clutter the admin interface.

How is it that such a useful general setting is seen as undesirable for inclusion? Especially at this advanced state of WordPress development, but

Show falling snow on my blog until January 4th.

is considered worthy?

Can anyone with a high-degree of technical awareness give an explanation for why this is not needed or wanted?

Are you sure you’re looking at the right site when you see, “Show falling snow on my blog until January 4th”? That’s a default option available in WordPress.com sites.

The advantage of an XML sitemap is to help search engines find your pages better, as explained in the resources discussed in your first thread. It’s an SEO feature. That could be said about any SEO feature and not just sitemaps.

What is the issue when people have to download an SEO plugin other than the dashboard gets “cluttered”? That’s not a compelling point that you really need to convey in order to convince us there’s a dilemma here.

I’ve been using this plugin for years

https://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

and it’s fine, no need for WP to develop their own thing.

Loudly seconded!

@andrew, I don’t own a wordpress.com site, but I do have 19 or so manually installed blogs on their own domains. If it’s been updated, it’s got a snow option. I feel like the option showed up randomly before thanksgiving or so and am hoping it vanishes for 11 months of the year after the 4th.

@vortex, Thanks, we’re obviously going to have to use something like that, but I still don’t see why this isn’t a default behavior for any site creation system. If not default at least as a built in option. Especially blogs which have frequent new content.

Anyway, that’s my rant. I guess you guys don’t agree that this is an important basic feature for any CMS.

it’s got a snow option.

Do you have JetPack?

Yes, yes I do. That explains that. Thanks yogi.