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There is a lot of info out there about sitemaps, but I haven't found exactly what I am looking for.

I am building a site which has separate mobile/desktop pages and also english and polish. In other words, every page in the site has four copies:

Example the index.html has m/index.html pl/index.html & m/pl/index.html

I have found that you can make a sitemap for mobile sites, according to google info but the sitemap must only hold urls of the mobile pages.

Then, google developers info says that you place the mobile urls in the same sitemap as the rest.

My question is, which is correct? Or have I missed the point completely.

Tim

John Conde
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asimovwasright
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  • @Downvoter - Why?? The question doesn't deviate from any of the forums' criteria... At least give a reason for down voting. – asimovwasright Nov 02 '15 at 08:31
  • Why the votes to close? Have I done something wrong? This is a programming question. Last time I checked XML was an accepted scripting language and has just as much place here as any other. – asimovwasright Nov 04 '15 at 09:29

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that is a great question! The short answer is that in order to maintain control and be better organised, you're best off having 4 separate sitemaps - for English, Polish, English mobile & Polish mobile.

Let me explain this: When you have multiple sub-sites, using 4 different sitemaps allows you to easily organise the URLs for each section together. It also clearly indicates to Google the site organisation, and allows you to uniformly indicate the equivalent alternate versions for the pages.

You should note that the Google Webmaster help doc does not tell you to combine mobile and desktop sitemaps. What they're saying is that you should reference the two versions to each other. So, in the desktop sitemap, you could point out the mobile equivalent pages using a rel="alternate" annotation. If you read the documentation closely, you'll see they call it a "two-way ('bidirectional') annotation"

The same principle applies in the multlingual scenario. You should use hreflang annotations to point out the equivalent English & Polish pages on each of the versions.

If you follow the hreflang and rel="alternate" annotations properly, you're allowing Google to easily determine which version (desktop v mobile and English v Polish) is most suitable for your users.

FarhadD
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  • Thank you, that's really informative! I will follow this structure from now on. I will keep the question open for another day in case anyone has anything interesting to add, then mark your answer correct. – asimovwasright Oct 31 '15 at 20:23
  • For the sake of clarity for future viewers, can you tell me if the sitemaps should all be in the root, or each in its respective sub-root , and is there any naming policy, and finally, should I also include a sitemap index? – asimovwasright Oct 31 '15 at 20:27
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    Either option is fine, so long as you declare the XML sitemaps correctly in robots.txt. There isn't any particular naming policy, so just go with a policy that's intuitive for you. A sitemap index can help new webmasters / people who review your website in the future, but it isn't necessary from Google's point of view if everything's correctly submitted in the Search Console and declared in robots.txt. – FarhadD Oct 31 '15 at 22:28
  • One more relevant question: There are two methods for page linking; the sitemap, which you have covered very clearly, but also the link tags within the head of each html doc. with rel=alternate and rel=canonical bidirectional respective linking. Can I choose to use both methods? – asimovwasright Nov 01 '15 at 07:32
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    While the official guidance is that one method should suffice, you can use both, but keep in mind there are pros and cons to this. PRO - it is immediately visible to anyone working on that page and is easier to remember to update. CON - if it's changed on page but not in the sitemaps, the conflicting data can drive unexpected, wrong search indexing. – FarhadD Nov 01 '15 at 12:15
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    Excellent answer and clarity! I hope this question helps others in the future. – asimovwasright Nov 01 '15 at 12:18
  • Glad to have helped :) – FarhadD Nov 01 '15 at 13:50