According to a current research study by Bing, the majority of sites have XML sitemaps, with the “lastmod” tag being the most important part of these sitemaps.
The “lastmod” tag suggests the last time the websites connected by the sitemap were customized and is utilized by online search engine to figure out how frequently to crawl a website and which pages to index.
Nevertheless, the research study likewise exposed that a substantial variety of “lastmod” worths in XML sitemaps were set improperly, with the most common problem equaling dates on all sitemaps.
Upon speaking with web admins, Microsoft found that the dates were set to the date of sitemap generation instead of content adjustment.
To resolve this problem, Bing is revamping its crawl scheduling stack to much better use the info offered by the “lastmod” tag in sitemaps.
This will enhance crawl effectiveness by lowering unneeded crawling of the same material and focusing on just recently upgraded material.
The enhancements have actually currently started on a restricted scale and are anticipated to present by June totally.
In Addition, Microsoft has actually upgraded sitemap.org for enhanced clearness by including the following line:
” Keep in mind that the date needs to be set to the date the connected page was last customized, not when the sitemap is produced.”
How To Utilize The Lastmod Tag Properly
To properly set the “lastmod” tag in a sitemap, you must include it in the << url> > tag for each page in the sitemap.
The date needs to remain in W3C Datetime format, with the most typically utilized formats being YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY-MM-DDThh: mm: ssTZD.
The date needs to show the last time the page was customized and must be upgraded frequently to guarantee that online search engine comprehend the importance and frequency of updates.
Here’s an example code bit:
<
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