Sitemaps
Author: Sandi'http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/sandi-baker/55292.htm"Sandi BakerSitemaps
What are sitemaps?
Sitemaps are used to inform search engines regarding URLs on a website that are available for crawling
Webmasters use these sitemaps. They use an XML file that lists the URL of a site that includes information about the URLs. This includes when each page was updated, other changes within the site and the relationship between the URLs in the site.
Using sitemaps allows the engine crawlers to crawl sites more efficiently.
Why use sitemaps?
They are particularly beneficial to those sites that use Macromedias Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.
Many search engines will only follow a certain number of links per page. If a site is very large, a sitemap can allow visitors to access all of the content on the website through the search engines.
How this works
An XML sitemap has a list of the pages on your website along with the information regarding each page.
This is an example:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/Services.htmhttp://freesitemapgenerator.com
I have included the main information from their homepage.
2008 freesitemapgenerator.com
Free Sitemap Generator
Our tool creates a sitemap as defined by Google for your site. Enter the url of your website(s), let our tools generate a sitemap for you and download the compressed sitemap later. Don't forget to submit the sitemap to Google. We spider your entire site (up to 5,000 pages) to make sure all links/pages are included in the sitemap.
Sitemaps generated: 96,329
(we spidered 184,176,500+ pages)
How does it work?
First you must create an account and add your first website. Just enter the homepage url of your website. Whenever you want to generate a sitemap press the make sitemap button on the control panel page.
Our spiders will, just like a Search Engine spider, crawl your website finding all links. When it is done spidering your website you will receive an e-mail.
You can then download the sitemap (zip file) from this site and upload it to your own website. Don't forget to submit your sitemap to Google. You can even let us upload the new sitemap directly to your website automatically! And we can even ping Google to let them know you have a new sitemap ready.
At this time we cannot spider more than 5,000 URLs per site.
The following one is for Google and Yahoo. It is from http://gsitecrawler.comhttp://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=
Yahoo!
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=
Ask.com
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=
Live Search
http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://letusgetitdone.info
About the Author:As the President and Founder of Let Us Get It Done, I am also the website designer. I have over 19 years in the marketing business. I also serve on the Board of Directors for a Non Profit Company that is dedicated to providing technology to the visually impaired.
I have a Degree in Business Management and Administration and well as an SEC License.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com
Tags: Sitemaps Index Webpages Search Engine Spiders Crawlers Webmasters Sites
