[SEO Question] Do Search Engine spiders read compressed (.gz) files ?
 

Yo guys,

Here's my SEO question for the guys who KNOW the RIGHT and correct answer.

My question is do search engine spiders read read .gz files...So let's say I have something.xml.gz , will it be read by se spiders , I mean the content of that file?

THank you yo!

BeTa!~~

bump for meeeeee

I wouldn't count on it....

they dont

Hmm, some 100% accurate information ? I want to be absolutely sure....cuz some of my sitemaps are compressed...and that google sitemap tool does allow, you can configure a sitemap to be compressed with gzip compresion....so I think they (SE spiders) can still see content of file.html.gz file....as browsers can.

actually now i see they can

this 3min editing shit sucks...anyhow

try to find such a file indexed

open it and copy/paste a part of the text on google and see if this appears

thing is i see a lot of .gz files indexed,but they are not actually compessed, they are either text files or pdf

We think they do.

that is right. THEY ARE compressed but we don't see that. They don't take so much disk space if they are pure txt and compressed....For example 10MB txt file could be compressed with gzip compression and it'll be 10KB,or so....

I am not sure whether or not SEs can read .gz files, but I am sure that browsers can!

Well, Google indicates that they do:

Q: Where do I place my Sitemap?

It is strongly recommended that you place your Sitemap at the root directory of your HTML server; that is, place it at http://example.com/sitemap.xml.gz.

Yep, I saw Google do. But those are the sitemaps generated with official google sitemap generator tool, and they have a header like this:

The question is, do the rest of SEs can read and support the sitemaps generated with google sitemap tool ?

you won't get any solid answers here anyway dude, especially on any topic involving SEO, I would do your own research if I were you...

Well, I'd agree with you woj, but some stand-up guys, as baddog are the people who you can trust and be sure they won't spread misinformation. So far I found out that google DOES support .gz compressed files....

I am not sure about the rest of Search Engines though ;(

Good question. Let us know what you find out.

Wish I could give you a definitive answer, but we don't know.

I shall do some more searching on this subject. Looks like very interesting question.

And looks like I've found the answer:

As goes Google, goes the world?

Probably you're right baddog...Google sets standards these days....