: Should 404 pages feature in your sitemap.xml I tend to generate the sitemaps for my static sites (no CMS) by using a service such as xml-sitemaps.com. They way this works if you input your
I tend to generate the sitemaps for my static sites (no CMS) by using a service such as xml-sitemaps.com. They way this works if you input your homepage and it crawls all the internal links of a site and then generates you a .xml file.
The problem with this is because its crawling from the homepage if a page if not linked to i.e. a 404 page it won't be included in the sitemap.
Is it good practice to have the 404 page in there?
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I would say yes but not because you want them indexed but instead removed from the search results.
If you add the required noindex tag or HTTP header to those 404 pages, you will be informing the search engine (Google in this case) that those links should lose their place in the search results.
In Google's words:
When Googlebot next crawls that page and see the tag or header,
Googlebot will drop that page entirely from Google Search results,
regardless of whether other sites link to it.
Source: support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en
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