Google Sitemaps Explained - How to Get Your Site Indexed With Google Sitemaps

[Adam Dicker]

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps
[Difficult, Hard, And Easy]

Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster
can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing
by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your
site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated
file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and
data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language)is everywhere these days,
you have probably seen the orange XML icon on many web sites and its
often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to
syndicate their content.

Today RSS is known mostly as 'Really Simple Syndication' but its original
acronym stood for 'Rich Site Summary'. XML
is only simple code like HTML and it is used to syndicate your
content to all interested parties.

And the interested party in this case is Google. By creating
Sitemaps Google is really asking webmasters to take charge of
the indexing and updating of their sites. Basically, doing
the Googlebot's job!

This is a 'Good' thing! With the steady influx of new web sites
growing rapidly, indexing all this material will become a challenge,
even with the resources of Google. With Sitemaps, websmasters can
now take charge and make sure their site is crawled and indexed.

Please note, indexing your site with Sitemaps WON'T improve
your rankings in Google. You will still be competing with the other
sites in Google for top positions. But with Sitemaps you can make
sure all your pages are crawled and indexed quickly by Google.

There are some other big advantages of using Google's Sitemaps
- mainly you have control over a few key variables, attributes or tags.
To explain this as simply as possible, your XML powered sitemap
file will have this simple code for each page of your site:

< url>
< loc>http://www.yoursite.com/< / loc>
< priority>1.0< /priority>
< lastmod>2005-07-03T16:18:09+00:00< /lastmod>
< changefreq>daily< /changefreq>
< /url>

Along with 'urlset' tags at the beginning and end of your code,
and an XML version indication - that's basically your XML file!
File size will depend on the number of webpages you have.

Taking a closer look at this XML file:

location - http://www.yoursite.com - name of your webpage

priority - you set the priority you want Google to place on that page
in your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least,
1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle. This is ONLY relative to
your site. It will not affect your rankings. Why is this important?
You have certain pages on your site that are more important than
others, (home page, high profit page, opt-in page, etc.) by placing high
priority on these pages, you will increase their importance in Google.

last modified - when you last modified that page, this timestamp allows
crawlers to avoid recrawling pages that haven't changed.

change frequency - you can tell Google how often you change that
particular page. Never, weekly, daily, hourly, and so on - if you
frequently update your page this could be extremely important.

Why do I need a XML Generator?

In order for this XML sitemap file on your site to be constantly
updated, you need a Generator that will spider your site, list
all the urls and automatically feed them to Google. Thus constantly
updating your site in Google's massive index or database.
Keep in mind, Google also gives you the option of submitting
a simple text file with all your URLs.

Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different
ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing
as you read this. For your convenience, three ways to generate your XML
Sitemaps file are listed below:

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like the back of your
hand and installing scripts doesn't scare the bejesus out of you,
you're probably smiling at the word difficult. Google supplies a link to a
generator which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough
up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google.
Google XML Generator

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed
on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're
doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it's encouraged
because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic
information. If you already have another Google Account gmail,
Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions
from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request
to the following URL:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/sit...ap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This
generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap file. Download
the phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run the generator to get
your XML sitemap file and send it to Google.
PHP Generator

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP
files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps a list of
these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here:
Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of the easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can
index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will
give you the sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site.

It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an
XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non-
compressed and make minor changes such as setting the priority,
changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to the root directory
of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google
Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, the only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site
you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file.
This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages
to your site - then you will need something like the PHP or Python
generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still the major search engine on the web so getting your
pages indexed and updated quickly is the major reason to use Google
Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably
the wisest route to take.

[DavidAusman]

Nice explanation
Very helpful to dnforum members

[kokopelli]

If you use Mambo there's a handy component (Google SiteMap Tool) to generate and submit the sitemap from the back end: http://mamboforge.net/projects/googlesitemap/

[domguys@gmail.com]

a nice generator is at http://www.web-design-pros.ca/softwa...Generator.html

I have a question on sitemaps. if you add pages but do not update it,
do new pages get indexed?

[DogFaceBoy]

Thanks for the great article Adam!

[cooljeba]

It is very detailed was very helpful.

Thanks Admin

..:: peace ::..
Jeba

[POLiSH]

FYI,

URL for sitemaps has changed for google:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/si...-et-wbmstrbeta

[dcristo]

I have a question on sitemaps. if you add pages but do not update it, do new pages get indexed?

Yes they would. Google Sitemaps is used by G to assist them to find new pages, it still uses it's normal methods to crawl web pages.

[labrocca]

So far the sitemaps have not really helped me too much. I have created the sitemaps for new sites and google does download them but it does not appear to speed up the indexing.

[dcristo]

So far the sitemaps have not really helped me too much. I have created the sitemaps for new sites and google does download them but it does not appear to speed up the indexing.

I agree, seems a complete waste of time.

[prempt]

So far the sitemaps have not really helped me too much. I have created the sitemaps for new sites and google does download them but it does not appear to speed up the indexing.

Same here. My site used to get crawled by Google on a 2-3 times a week schedule, since I added a sitemap they haven't crawled my site in 2 weeks. They do download the map but have stopped crawling and indexing the site.

My sitemap is google generated and is the correct setup (did the google check file step). My question is this, google hasn't added a <changeFreq> to the sections, wonder if this has anything to do with it. Also my <lastmod> fields are showing the files as being updated so they should be crawling the newer version.

Have to wonder if google's sitemap program is bugged. I am going to manually add a <changefreq> and see if that helps.

So far the sitemaps have not really helped me too much. I have created the sitemaps for new sites and google does download them but it does not appear to speed up the indexing.

Just as an FYI, I just did some checking on the sitemaps and one thing I found out is that google isn't even using the tags in a sitemap file to do any indexing. They are just using them internally to see what the common theme for webmasters are. However (using my own experience), adding a sitemap seems to actually slow down indexing for websites.

Here is the link for google not using tags in sitemaps.. The Link

[POLiSH]

I have never had a problem with sitemaps. Put up a site, don't bother with url submission because it is a waste of time. Put a site up two weeks ago, only used a sitemap and my site is fully indexed with no effort on my part. Whatever you all are doing dosen't sound like its working. Maybe it's time to move on to something else.

[Jacksplat]

I've tried so many ways to get my sites indexed.. the only ones indexed are the ones i havent tried.

I've tried through some software, through google itself, etc..

I'm new to this and hopefully i get a recipe soon.

[GOff]

I've tried so many ways to get my sites indexed.. the only ones indexed are the ones i havent tried.

I've tried through some software, through google itself, etc..

I'm new to this and hopefully i get a recipe soon.

linking from relevant sites are a great start

[daveb1]

Try this sitemap generator

http://auditmypc.com/

I use it all the time. Free and easy, just needs a browser that supports java (ie most of them).

Dave

[POLiSH]

Fresh content is "Key"

[safetin]

Thank you, this article helpful to me

[whitebark]

The single best free sitemap maker we have used has been http://gsitecrawler.com/ . On smaller sites of less than 50 pages it is done in seconds. We had it index a site with an unwieldy 26000 pages - excluding the forum and it performed great. By being able to set exclusions it will only index what you want.

Works for Yahoo as well, makes static sitemap pages for your site, rss, and more.

Windows only I believe, but still highly recommended.

[touchring]

Ummm, anyone knows if there's a site map for parking pages or is it advisable to do that?

[editionblog]

Very helpful article very thanks