I imagine Google modified the sitemaps-related search developer documentation final week. I’m not certain if any of the content material particularly modified, however Google did rename among the pages and create new pages, possibly to consolidate the content material and make it simpler to grasp and entry.
Google additionally added a brand new part named combining sitemap sections. Google additionally changed the “cut up up your massive sitemaps” with “handle sitemaps with sitemap index file.” I didn’t dig by means of every file to see precisely what modified however you could need to.
Here’s a side-by-side of the previous construction versus the brand new construction, with the added “combining sitemap sections” within the sidebar:
Gary Illyes from Google confirmed on LinkedIn, “nothing modified, we simply cleaned it up and reacted to some person suggestions (like doc about combining sitemap extensions).”
Discussion board dialogue at Twitter.
Replace: Google advised us “primarily based on person suggestions, we revamped our documentation about sitemaps. Notably, we decreased duplication between the sitemaps protocol and our documentation, added extra examples to our documentation about sitemap extensions, and added a brand new doc about the best way to mix sitemap extensions.”
