Understanding the Impact of Updating the “lastmod” Tag in Your Sitemap on Indexing Performance
In the dynamic landscape of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), website owners often grapple with optimizing their site structure and update strategies to maximize visibility. One common practice is maintaining a sitemap that accurately reflects the content updates on your website. An element within this sitemap, the “lastmod” (last modified) tag, signals to search engines when a page was last updated. However, questions arise: Can frequently updating the “lastmod” without substantive content changes negatively affect your site’s indexing?
Case Study: Artist Directory Website Experiencing Sudden De-Indexing
Consider a passionate owner of a music directory platform featuring artist profiles, discographies, social media links, and streaming service integrations. Over recent months, they observed a significant drop in their indexed URLs—more than 30,000 URLs have been deindexed, leaving approximately 5,000 pages indexed according to Google Search Console.
The affected pages now mostly fall into categories like “Crawled – currently not indexed” or “Discovered – currently not indexed.” These statuses indicate that Google has recognized these pages but has not added them to its index, which could potentially harm the website’s overall visibility and traffic.
The Owner’s Practice and Concern
The website owner maintains a routine of updating the “lastmod” timestamp on each artist page every 1-2 days to ensure discographies and other profile information remain current. Despite minimal or no content changes, this frequent update might be signaling to search engines that these pages are regularly changing. The question then becomes: Could these frequent “lastmod” updates without significant content modifications be contributing to the deindexing issue?
Potential Impact of Frequent “lastmod” Updates
While the “lastmod” tag informs search engines about the recency of content, excessive or unnecessary updates can sometimes lead to unintended consequences:
- Crawling Overhead: Frequent updates may prompt search engines to crawl pages more often than necessary, potentially exhausting crawl budget, especially on larger sites.
- Perception of Low-Quality Content: If pages are updated with trivial changes but the overall content remains static, search engines might interpret these signals as low value or suspicious activity.
- Indexing Delays or Removals: In some cases, inconsistent or minimal updates can contribute to pages being crawled but not indexed, or even deindexed if search engines reconcile that no meaningful change has occurred.
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