URL List, Anyone?

OK, who remembers doing a URL list waaaaay back in the day? Do you? If not, don't think this is something you've neglected. You haven't. So, here's the deal... The urllist.txt is for Yahoo search engine. It's just a list of URL's with no tags.

I believe you can submit with tags also but this is what they say on their site...

"A text file containing a list of URLs, each URL at the start of a new line. The filename of the URL list file must be urllist.txt; for a compressed file the name must be urllist.txt.gz."

Yahoo! currently allows webmasters to submit a listing of their URLs to their search engine. This listing file (urllist.txt) is a simple text file with all the URLs that can be submitted listed. You will of course first need to crawl your site so that you have the listing of URLs.

Just use Notepad, but honestly, you just need your XML sitemap. I think the XML sitemap was created to get away from this, because a simple list doesn't tell you jack about when the page/post was last updated, how often it gets updated, and what the crawl priority should be.

Honestly, You Don't Need A URL List!

At any rate, don't make more work for yourself. Just set up your XML sitemap and be done with it. Why did I even write this up? Because a local SEO company that I'm evaluating for a potential client has the URL list as well as XML sitemap creation as part of their service offerings. I don't know about you, but that sends up a red flag for me.

Is the company that much out of touch?

Is this just padding their task list, and they know damn well they won't ever do one?

I don't know. But it's strange to see this nowadays.

If you'd like to learn the most up to date SEO knowledge, strategies and tactics, let's get together for some SEO training! I promise we won't cover a URL list!

Until we meet again, stay safely between the ditches!

All the very best to you,

Nancy McDonald

Screen shot courtesy of author, Feb 2018