Do You Exclude Taxonomies From the Sitemap?

When you submit your sitemap to Google it shows all of the stuff that you want Google to see and hopefully index. In many sitemaps there would show also the taxonomies: like your Categories and Tags.

These are mainly just snippets that show up like a sort and usually don't appear the same as entire posts or pages. It is best this way to avoid the painful duplicate content penalties of Google and they usually just link to your main content anyway.

I have read many articles on how to view these taxonomies from an SEO standpoint and the way that I am trying now is to exclude taxonomies from my sitemap. I use the AIO SEO plugin (All in One SEO) and I have just marked them as excluded from the sitemap.

I haven't noticed any difference in how Google views my posts after doing this but it did make a lot of sense to me to exclude them from the sitemap.

The main reason to leave them out is because Google won't view these snippets as Quality Content. Afterall they are just snippets. Taxonomies are mostly just used by your visitors for site navigation and serve no beneficial purpose in search results, that is they won't help your ranking.

I share this information as a pointer and would love to hear your take on it. Do you really think it's a good idea to exclude the taxonomies from the sitemap?

As I said I have believed this and now have mine left off the sitemap. Please share your view and comments on this topic in the comments below and also remember to like this article after you have read it.

Good luck and Happy times,

tom