Having a poke around Bing’s XML sitemap (a report that helps engines like Google to pick out and index content on a website), there are some thrilling references indexed, one of which is the “travel manual” sitemap which is offered at the link below:
Viewing the sitemap indicates a listing of seek queries reputedly list a ramification of cities/counties and side their respective international locations. This particularly capabilities the United States, however also spans most of the globe as you can see opening any of those URLs currently suggests a blunders page, which to maximum search engine optimization experts would be a bit of a crimson caution flag.
Including them inside the XML sitemap in this way is executed to help serps (like Google) find these pages; however, if those pages don’t exist and return what is known as a 404 blunder popularity, it defeats the point of with them right here in the first location. Checking at the Way Back Machine, it appears the journey manual URL was crawled and indexed in May 2018. However, the cached web page additionally suggests a 404 web page.
So that begs the question – why were they introduced to the XML sitemap, and who is the tour guide (or what came about it)? Could the sitemap have been updated a chunk too eagerly, with Bing making plans for a brand new tour manual collection? Or ought this have been a failed or aborted undertaking – the likes of which occur all of the time with Google and Bing, extra affectionately termed as mission “sunsetting?
This vehicle-generated web page contains facts on things to do nearby, locations to visit (with counseled day itineraries), hotels to live at, nice times to go, and other related articles from the internet. Many travel companies will be aiming to optimize for these vacation spot manual pages, as they will be riding huge quantities of site visitors almost at once from the hunt consequences. This is something Tim Capper wrote about a few months ago over on the SEM Rush blog.
As a facet note – I was fortunate sufficient to interview Tim returned in August in we discussed this, and other factors of seeking marketing for resorts and tours, in some more elements. It’s doubtful whether or not Google may be permitting these Travel Guides to get indexed in the traditional search consequences (none of those pages is currently listed, and it looks like they may be blockading this from taking place.
Even though there is no “no index” tag used on these pages just but) but I’d bet they had virtually been pushing their good fortune if they did ever allow indexing- and risking punishment similarly from the EU. It’s hard to mention for certain. However, it does appear that Bing might have something planned. Very currently, they made clear strides in optimizing Google through their new Collections function, as highlighted in the below Tweet with the aid of search engine marketing expert Dan Shure.
