XML Sitemaps are an hassle-free way for webmasters to tell search engines about pages on their website that may possibly be crawled by their robots.
A typical XML Sitemap file lists every single URL, together with information and facts about when it was final updated, how quite often it generally changes, and how vital it is, relative to other pages in the webpage). This assists search engines to significantly more intelligently crawl your internet site.
In November 2006, Google, Yahoo! and MSN joined forces to assistance a new sector regular for sitemaps: Sitemaps .90. As extended as webmasters stick to the protocol, they can make sure their web pages are completely and consistently indexed across all the important search engines (a real step forward). This article is very important for all those with missing or poorly ranked pages.
The official website for the joint venture is at sitemaps.org and contains a lot of information about the new common and it's syntax. What the web-site singularly fails to do is explain correctly how to submit your sitemap to the massive 3! The format recommended on the webpage of:
does not at the moment function at any of the three web pages! Until it does, this brief post gives instructions for how to (a) create your sitemap and (b) how to submit to each and every of the 3 major search engines...
Producing your Sitemap
Some hosting providers (for instance 1and1) produce utilities via their web control panel, to build your sitemap, so you must often check with your provider initially. If this service is not offered, then make a visit to xml-sitemaps.com and enter your webpage URL into the generator box. Copy-and-paste the resulting sitemap into notepad, then conserve-and-upload to your web-site with the file name: sitemap.xml
If you want to validate the XML prior to uploading to the search engines (helpful if you have produced any manual amendments), appear at the XML validator (at the exact same web page) exactly where you can put in the URL of your sitemap and check it against the typical.
Submit sitemap to MSN
MSN have yet to implement a formal interface for Sitemap submission (as at July 2007). To monitor the circumstance, please take a look at (from time to time) the MSN Official Livesearch Weblog (where exactly where future announcements are probably to be discovered).
Whilst MSN have but to implement a front door, there is a recognised back door for submitting your sitemap to the MSN Search index namely moreover.com! You should use the following syntax straight in your browser URL box:
Considering that February 2005, furthermore.com have been the official provider of RSS feeds to the myMSN portal (see press release) and dependable evidence suggests that submission to Moreover will result in MSN spidering your pages inside two-three weeks.
Note that, while MSN nevertheless do not assistance direct submission, they do recommend on their weblog that you add a reference to your Sitemap into your robots.txt file (something now supported by sitemaps.org). For instance:
This would tell MSN (and all other engines) to crawl your sitemap file but not to crawl your cgi-bin directory. For more info on how to implement a robots.txt file (in the root of your site webserver) please check out:
Submit sitemap to Google
Google initially created the XML schema for sitemaps and have developed a dedicated portal for webmasters, from exactly where you can submit your sitemap:
Initial, you want to tell Google all the web sites you personal, then verfiy that you indeed own them. The verifiaction is accomplished by adding a metatag amongst the head tags on your web-site homepage. The syntax for the tag is as follows:
There are full directions on how to do this on the Google webpage.
Submit sitemap to Yahoo
Yahoo follows a comparable method to Google. Again, there is a devoted sevice for webmasters (Yahoo! Website Explorer) and a procedure for verifying your ownsership of the internet site. 1st go to:
Add a website, then click on the verification button. You can then download a verfication essential html file - which you will need to upload to the root directory of your webserver. Then you can return to Web-site Explorer and tell Yahoo to get started authentication. This will take up to 24 hours. At the very same time you can also add your sitemap by clicking on the manage button and then adding the sitemap as a feed.
Submit sitemap to Ask
Ask follows a simpler approach to the other three. To submit you sitemap, you merely enter a ping URL, followed by the full URL of exactly where your sitemap is located:
Soon after clicking return, you will get a reassuring message from Ask that they have received your submission. Especially neat!
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