Google Sitemaps

23rd August 2005 | permanent link
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Google Sitemaps (BETA) OK, I've got to stop writing about Google so much. You might start thinking there's something going on between the two of us. But I asure you, nothing is going on ;)

What have I stumbled upon this time? Google Sitemaps. They are marked as Beta, but a feature like that won't stay Beta for much longer. So what is it? Well Google has this to say.

Google Sitemaps is an easy way for you to help improve your coverage in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep us informed of all your web pages, and when you make changes to these pages.
With Google Sitemaps you get:

Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages

Fresher search results

A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes

Don't worry. This program will not replace the normal method of crawling the web that Google uses to index pages. It just gives them additional information about the content of your page that might otherwise be overlooked.

Still interested? Me too :) So lets continue. How to get in on this then?

You can participate in the Google Sitemaps program by following these basic steps:

Creating a Sitemap in a supported format.

Submitting that Sitemap to Google.

Updating your Sitemap when your site changes.

The final step isn't really necessary, as you can specify how frequently your content changes in your sitemap, wich in turn will attract spiders to periodicaly revisit and recrawl your site pushing new content on your pages to apear in search results on Google. But it still might not be a bad idea to resubmit your changed Sitemap or just use pa http request to let them know that your content has changed.

To generate a Sitemap you can use the Sitemap Generator or make a script of your own like I did. Here is how a Sitemap should look like once you're done:



xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
   
      http://www.example.com/
      2005-01-01
      monthly
      0.8
   
   
      
        http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12
      
      weekly
   
   
      
        http://www.example.com/catalog?item=73
      
      2004-12-23
      weekly