Remove the Priority and Changefreq tags

[abea]

I received this yesterday from an SEO consultancy working on a client's SEO project in reference to the Apos site-map.

Remove the Priority and Changefreq tags included before each URL. Google pays no mind to these and removing will help decrease the page load burden.

I've requested more information and am starting this to get it in the discussion. "Load burden" does seem a bit much for most site-maps, but if it's big enough maybe it matters.

[boutell]

It has been suggested by Google that these tags don't matter much anymore:

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-priority-change-frequency-xml-sitemap-20273.html

I'm not convinced that loading our sitemap XML file is a burden that's impeding Google in any way, but there's a case for a flag to drop these since there's no compelling evidence Google cares. I wouldn't just drop them outright as another client might have the opposite concern.

[abea]

A likely harmless BC-break still being a BC break. I've suggested to the client that we could bill some time to adding an option to disable those fields. I'll contribute that back here once approved.