Xml sitemap priority help

[Dazza30]

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Ive just discovered the priority tag in my xml sitemap.

All my pages are set to 0.5 which i think is by default, can anyone tell me what benefit can be gained from changing it?. Or should i leave it as it is?

[Stakker]

It's if you have hundreds/thousands of pages then google (and other search engines) will only search so many each day, so by setting the priority you are telling crawlers the order in which to go through your site.

If you have a smaller site then keeping them all at 0.5 is fine. However if there are pages that get updated often, then cranking up the priority won't do you any harm, you are just telling the search engines what you think they should be looking at first.

That's how I understand it anyway.

[Pete Taylor]

Thats how it works.

You may also find that when you search Google using site:mysite, the pages you have made a priority, show higher in the list.

[Dazza30]

Thanks stakker i wasnt sure but i guessed that was what it was for, thanks! for the help

[tbp]

Google can give you a warning in webmaster tools, if all pages have the same priority, but it won't cause any problems, its just pointing out that in effect you're ruling out the point of the system if all pages have the same priority.

All the priority does though is to tell google which pages you want it to spider first, it has nothing to do with rankings, and google may still go its own way anyway.

Generally the home page would have the highest priority, and then work down from there.