I have a general question about how to go about make the sitemap for my site. without breaking any possible rules in listing my site in this post, I will try to explain.
My site deals with names, meanings and origins.
From the index you can search by letter, origin or type in a meaning and get results
Here is my question. my site has over 33,000 names in the database.
I have set up my sitemap to index all pages of my site (articles, blog, top product pics, etc) except the actual pages for each name. Meaning, when you hit "M" in the alphabet, those pages are indexed. But if you went a step further and hit "Mark", the details page for that page were not indexed (page includes the specific meaning for that name, origin, and a RATE THIS NAME system, that is it).
This gave my site 537 links instead of over 33,000.
Can I get some opinions if this is enough, or is it advised to create the long .xml file. When i tried it kept stopping every 200 links and each time I resumed it would get slower and slower. That is why I tried it this way. Am I hurting my site?
Also, will those excluded pages EVER be indexed if I do not have them in my sitemap? Are they completely blocked from being stumbled upon by spiders?
Any responses and opinions would be appreciated.
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