Very odd situation happened with 2 websites when i created 2 sitemaps for both websites. I have been an SEO person to never create a sitemap or use them period. Then I an itch and it said to create two xml sitemaps for 2 different websites. After uploading them to there website directory that was in correlation with the sitemap I then went into Google WebMaster Tools and added the sitemaps for both websites. Less than 2 days later very highly ranked keywords literally dropped from page 1 with over 30 keywords being on page 1 of google to page 2, 3, 4, 29, etc i assume you get the picture. This was for both websites all the other websites I left alone and they are perfectly fine with never having used or implemented a sitemap so it leads to be believe from first hand experience that it's a bad idea to use an xml sitemap. Now I am sure that hundreds of people can argue back and forth about this and that is ok. I just think personally that I wont be utilizing an XML Sitemap again...this one change and only change has costed me hundreds of dollars losted over the past 3 days of my ranking dropping.
Now I can say that it did index more pages faster even though google would have gotten around to it within 3-7 days instead of 1 or 2, but to preserve my high ranking I am more than willing to wait.
I added the xml sitemap on January 2, 2012 and on January 4, 2012 page 1 many rankings/keywords disappeared by the 5th only dropped further back I have since deleted the sitemaps from the web dirs and removed them from google web master tools.
To find out more you can go check this out..
Tucson Internet Marketing
Friday, January 6, 2012
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