Whenever you write a blog post, there's a big chance your blogging platform automatically pings a dedicated server. This way, a blog search engine (like Technorati or Google Blog Search) can discover new stuff to index.
If you create a standard web page, and upload it to a server, no search engine will find out unless there's a link to that page somewhere or you manually submit it. Sitemaps protocol, developed by Google, and supported by three major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, wants to overcome this problem.
"A Sitemap is an XML file that can be made available on a website and acts as a marker for search engines to crawl certain pages. It is an easy way for webmasters to make their sites more search engine friendly. It does this by conveniently allowing webmasters to list all of their URLs along with optional metadata, such as the last time the page changed, to improve how search engines crawl and index their websites.
Sitemaps enhance the current model of Web crawling by allowing webmasters to list all their Web pages to improve comprehensiveness, notify search engines of changes or new pages to help freshness, and identify unchanged pages to prevent unnecessary crawling and save bandwidth."
There are many tools that can help you generate a sitemap for your site, including a Python script created by Google.
The fact that Yahoo and Microsoft support this protocol is a big step towards a wider acceptance.
Here are the announcements from: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
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"we are excited to announce that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are coming together in support of the SiteMaps protocol"
ReplyDeleteNo mention that it is googles Idea then?
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
ReplyDeleteIs the link above related to this news?
Yes. That's the place where you can submit URLs, feeds and now sitemaps for Yahoo.
ReplyDeleteI think its great that google and yahoo are teaming up on this project. I think sitmaps are very important and it was a wise choice to work on the subject.
ReplyDelete"
ReplyDeleteNo mention that it is googles Idea then?"
True, on sitemaps.org it it only mentions it has support from Google, not created by Google ;)
Google just use the protocol and help with dev. Its just like how Firefox and IE uses the HTT Protocol (HTTP), they didnt invent it, an English guy did, but they sure use it.
Sitebases, the next protocol after Sitemaps. It can save the time and press for the search engine, also for the websites. It can bring new search engine that named Search Engine 2.0. Using Sitebases protocol, will save 95% bandwidth above. It is another sample for long tail theory. In this protocol, I suggested that all search engine can share their Big Sitebases, so the webmaster just need to submit their Sitebases to one Search Engine. And I suggested that all search engines open their search API for free and unlimited use.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sitebases.org/protocol/
Need to create XML sitemap files for your sites or to notify search engines about updated sitemap files? Try Sitemap Writer Pro. It is a powerfull tool that helps you to create and keep up-to-date sitemaps for your websites.
ReplyDeleteSitemap Writer Pro has new tools - FTP manager for uploading sitemaps, search engine notification tool (now supports for Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and MSN.com), site crawler for adding an URLs into the sitemap and Yahoo Index viewer.
To download Sitemap Writer Pro click here.