Google, Yahoo and MSN Launch Sitemaps.org

[bathurst_guy]

Sitemaps.org is a webmaster protocol that is attempting to introduce a web standard for these documents. Essentially, the program is a group acceptance of the Sitemaps service introduced by Google. Yahoo and MSN jumping on board in such a vocal manner emphasizes this. In fact, the three engines unifying like this the most important aspect of Sitemaps launch.

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

www.sitemaps.org

[SandDancer]

Does anyone else share my thoughts that the reason they did this is because historically search engines only deal at the page level? I think there's been a general misconception for years that a spider is aware of a site, but all it does is use http to jump around where its told to go.

I've got a feeling they are doing this for a much bigger reason than simply keeping webmasters happy

[KLadofoRA]

Does anyone else share my thoughts that the reason they did this is because historically search engines only deal at the page level? I think there's been a general misconception for years that a spider is aware of a site, but all it does is use http to jump around where its told to go.

I've got a feeling they are doing this for a much bigger reason than simply keeping webmasters happy
gr8 mind ;)

[pb2006]

It seems sitemap xml submission doesn't work so well for my website. I submitted some sitemap files, but the search engine still index my site very slowly.