Google, Yahoo and MSN team up
Big news from the search engine universe, Google, Yahoo and MSN have announced that they will all support Google's Sitemaps protocol.
The companies are adopting Google's Sitemaps protocol, available since June 2005, which enables Web site owners to manually feed their pages to Google and to check whether their sites have been crawled.
Source: CNET
The new official Sitemaps website has the full technical details and an FAQs page. It looks like Sitemaps are becoming more important for search engine submissions and a common standard would seem to make sense.
» More about the Sitemaps announcement
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George 17 November 2006, 14:47 1
I’ve been using Google sitemaps for quite a while now and each time I go in they seem to be giving more information to webmasters. I think it is a really positive step from Google and keeps them ahead of the compeition. It also helps to maintain sites by pointing out any errors.
I’m of the opinion that more information from Google is good for white hat SEO and I would like to see this continue.
Ed 26 November 2006, 12:40 2
I’m not so sure about this. What’s the purpose of a sitemap? If it’s a navigational aid for users, then fine, but if it’s just a page to crawl for bots then what’s wrong with crawling the existing navigation system?
I worry it’s a green light for people to continue producing primary navigation using Flash, JavaScript and other such technologies. Why worry about the bots finding your pages when the sitemap does it for you?
Clive Walker 26 November 2006, 13:07 3
Personally, I have never had a problem with Google or other search engines finding pages in websites that I have created (whether I have a ‘normal’ sitemap page or not). However, I am often asked to look at websites where this is not the case. In these cases, I have found a Google Sitemap to be useful because (a) it quickly brings the website to Google’s attention and (b) it starts a dialogue with Google that sometimes tells me if Google has any problems with pages (via Google Sitemaps diagnostics).