Magento-1 Sitemaps – Exclude Certain Products from Magento Sitemap.xml Generation

The steps I ended up using were as follows, and the comments and answers so far got me started in the right direction.

First I added a row to the "sitemap" table. Since we have multi-store set up, and because I want to keep my module store agnostic, I didn't hard code this INSERT into a MySQL migration, but just ran it on the store manually:

INSERT INTO sitemap (sitemap_type, sitemap_filename, sitemap_path, store_id)
    VALUES ('people', 'people.xml', '/sitemap/', 2);

Then I overwrote the Mage_Sitemap_Model_Sitemap model inside the global/models section in my own module's config.xml file:

<global>
    <models>
        <sitemap>
            <rewrite>
                <sitemap>Mymod_People_Model_Sitemap</sitemap>
            </rewrite>
        </sitemap>
    </models>
</global>

This overwrites any calls to Mage_Sitemap_Model_Sitemap site-wide with my custom model, but I didn't want to copy and paste too much code there. Using Petar Dzhambazov's suggestion, I used a conditional to defer to the parent class unless the sitemap_type is "people".

class Mymod_People_Model_Sitemap extends Mage_Sitemap_Model_Sitemap
{
    const PAGE_REFRESH_FREQUENCY = 'weekly';
    const PAGE_PRIORITY = '1.0';

    public function generateXml()
    {
        if ($this->getSitemapType() != 'people') {
            return parent::generateXml();
        }

        $io = new Varien_Io_File();
        $io->setAllowCreateFolders(true);
        $io->open(array('path' => $this->getPath()));

        if ($io->fileExists($this->getSitemapFilename()) && !$io->isWriteable($this->getSitemapFilename())) {
            Mage::throwException(Mage::helper('sitemap')->__('File "%s" cannot be saved. Please, make sure the directory "%s" is writeable by web server.', $this->getSitemapFilename(), $this->getPath()));
        }

        $io->streamOpen($this->getSitemapFilename());

        $io->streamWrite('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>' . "\n");
        $io->streamWrite('<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">');

        $storeId = $this->getStoreId();
        $date    = Mage::getSingleton('core/date')->gmtDate('Y-m-d');
        $baseUrl = Mage::app()->getStore($storeId)->getBaseUrl(Mage_Core_Model_Store::URL_TYPE_LINK);

        /**
         * Generate people sitemap
         */
        $changefreq = Mymod_People_Model_Sitemap::PAGE_REFRESH_FREQUENCY;
        $priority   = Mymod_People_Model_Sitemap::PAGE_PRIORITY;
        $collection = Mage::getModel('people/person')->getCollection();
        foreach ($collection as $item) {
            $xml = sprintf('<url><loc>%s</loc><lastmod>%s</lastmod><changefreq>%s</changefreq><priority>%.1f</priority></url>',
                htmlspecialchars($item->getUrl()),
                $date,
                $changefreq,
                $priority
            );
            $io->streamWrite($xml);
        }
        unset($collection);

        $io->streamWrite('</urlset>');
        $io->streamClose();

        $this->setSitemapTime(Mage::getSingleton('core/date')->gmtDate('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
        $this->save();

        return $this;
    }
}

Is there a better way, that avoids copying and pasting so much from the parent class?

You cam move preferred product first by changing the search result internal sorting.

For this
1. Create a new attribute, type price, called "Preferred Rate"
2. Add to current attribute set and fill in values. For top product insert, say 99, for next 80 and so on.
4. Override the Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List_Toolbar block to join this attribute if the current sort order is relevance.
5. Sort by rate DESC, relevance DESC
6. You can import/export this attribute or mass change it value via admin panel

Example code:

public function setCollection($collection)   
{
    parent::setCollection($collection);
    if ($this->getCurrentOrder() != 'relevance'){
        return $this;   
    }

    $collection->addAttributeToSort("rate", "desc"); 

    // move to the first position
    $select = $collection->getSelect(); 
    $orders = $select->getPart(Zend_Db_Select::ORDER);
    if (count($orders) > 1){
        $last = array_pop($orders);
        array_unshift($orders, $last);
        $select->setPart(Zend_Db_Select::ORDER, $orders); 
    }          

    return $this;
}

Customer will only see relevance, and there will be no changes for catalog or sort by price/name.

Also you can consider some search extension that gives priority to some attributes, like product name. So if the search matches the name of product A and description of product B the product A goes first.