Google Sitemap

[The New Guy]

Sitemaps, which is currently in beta, calls for Web administrators to place a Sitemaps-formatted file on their Web servers. This allows the Google crawlers to see which pages are present on a site and which have been changed.

In order to use the tool, known as the Sitemap Generator, a Web administrator must create an XML file, know how to transfer files to a Web server and know how to run scripts. Sitemap Generator requires Python 2.2 or higher, according to Google.

The company notes, however, that using Sitemaps will not influence a site's ranking on Google's search listings.

http://news.com.com/Google+tests+tool+to+aid+Web+indexing/2100-1032_3-5730744.html?tag=cd.top


https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Any thoughts?

[MarkB]

If it won't influence site rankings, then I don't see why they:

a. are expecting webmasters to do it for nothing;
b. why they're doing it, period.

[James]

I can't see how this would do much better than just having regular links throughout your site.

[Chris]

I believe this would be a way to cut down on bandwidth used by Googlebot if that is a problem for you.... but if it runs server side it wouldn't work for dynamic sites anyways and any site with enough pages to have bandwidth issues isn't going to be static.

[Generalissimo]

I believe this would be a way to cut down on bandwidth used by Googlebot if that is a problem for you.... but if it runs server side it wouldn't work for dynamic sites anyways and any site with enough pages to have bandwidth issues isn't going to be static.


Well possibly some of those wikipedia things are static, I've seen one that converts the entire encyclopedia to html files...