I've realized that XML Sitemap generates an XML for everything just fine except the taxonomy term itself. The taxonomy term can be a page (I create this via views taxonomy_rewrite) that contains all the nodes related to it. Unfortunately, when I look at the XML I don't see last modification date and change frequency values for any of the taxonomy terms themselves.

I think this is a bug and an important one because you have to tell Google that taxonomy term pages are frequently being updated. To clarify what I wrote I am also attaching a screenshot.

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screen-capture-10.png67.42 KBxtrecoolx
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Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) CreditAttribution: Anonymous commented

http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html

The "modification date" and "change frequency" are only suggestions and not required. However, a "changefreq" of "always" for this entity would be good since that is the most likely scenario for taxonomy. And since the "changefreq" is always a "lastmod" of the time of page generation would also be good even though that may be a lie. To stop the lie would require a DB hit for each tag, I don't think that is wise for this.

xtrecoolx’s picture

xtrecoolx CreditAttribution: xtrecoolx commented

So based on your suggestion, can we assume that Google and other search engines do not care about these values and there is no need to worry about? If so, then why do we have nodes with frequency values?

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) CreditAttribution: Anonymous commented

Right, the search engines shouldn't care, although Google may be a bit picky with the Webmaster Tools reports.

Because the change date of a node is given in the node object when we are given it we can add it easily for the node entity.

Coupon Code Swap’s picture

Coupon Code Swap CreditAttribution: Coupon Code Swap commented

btw, a quick fix for this:

/sites/all/modules/xmlsitemap/xsl/xmlsitemap.xsl

-      <td><xsl:value-of select="sitemap:changefreq"/></td>
+      <td>
+        <xsl:choose>
+          <xsl:when test="sitemap:changefreq">
+            <xsl:value-of select="sitemap:changefreq"/>
+          </xsl:when>
+          <xsl:otherwise>weekly</xsl:otherwise>
+        </xsl:choose>
+      </td>

Perhaps this could be incorporated as an option.