Is XML Sitemap Priority tag Relevant?

[smartrealty]

Hi Dear members,

I have my website with wordpress. I developed an xml sitemap and assigned mky important pages with high priority say 0.8. Still when i see in search engine results my less important pages are indexed while more important one do not show up at all. Is this common or search engine disregard the priority tag and set their own? Please let me know what exactly should i do?

All answers will be appreciated. thanks

Nari

[Kevin H]

This is what Google says about the Priority tag:

Does not affect your site's ranking in Google search results. Because this value is relative to other pages on your site, assigning a high priority (or specifying the same priority for all URLs) will not help your site's search ranking. In addition, setting all pages to the same priority will have no effect.

Personally, if I use it at all, it is just to HOPE that if I give a new page a higher priority it MAY get indexed more quickly.

[smartrealty]

This is what Google says about the Priority tag:

Does not affect your site's ranking in Google search results. Because this value is relative to other pages on your site, assigning a high priority (or specifying the same priority for all URLs) will not help your site's search ranking. In addition, setting all pages to the same priority will have no effect.

Personally, if I use it at all, it is just to HOPE that if I give a new page a higher priority it MAY get indexed more quickly.

Thank you Kevin for answering; it was very useful.