Google Sitemaps
Well, folks, I've been out of the country for nearly a month, so I fell behind on all my blogs, including this internet marketing tool review blog.
I do have a couple of reviews in "rough draft" form, and am hoping to get them finished and posted in fairly short order.
Today, however, I want to comment on a new tool that Google launched just within the past few weeks. I think this is a huge step forward, but time will tell.
Google Site Maps is a cool utility that is currently in beta test, but open to all webmasters. In a nutshell, you create a TXT file, or an XML file on your website that contains the URLs of all of your recently updated or newly created pages. This new site map acts as an RSS feed to alert Google every time you update your site.
If you want to get fancy, you can also inform Google of how often you update various pages on your site. The idea is to get the googlebot to come looking for those page updates ASAP and get your pages ranked and listed that much more quickly.
I've done two of these so far. I recently updated one of my sites, and discovered Google Sitemaps only a day or two later. I simply created a TXT file I named "site-map.txt", put in the URLs of all of my new pages, and notified Google.
Bingo! The googlebot came calling almost immediately, and has been back again several times. It even re-crawled another of my sites which is linked from the one mentioned above. How cool!
Today, I created an XML site map for a second site, whose structure I just changed. This time, I used a free online tool at SiteMapsPal.Com to create the base file.
I then downloaded it to my HTML editor, and manually input the URLs of the new pages. Uploaded it to my server, notified Google, and I'm expecting the googlebot to visit shortly.
Think you're not up to creating these XML files? Not to worry. Several utilities have already sprung up to do it for you. Google even lists them on the information page you'll see when you log on after creating your free account.
OK ... I've got to get back to work, but I didn't want you to think I've abandoned the blog. Just spent a few weeks in Europe, and another week recuperating and going through my mail.
More later ...
I do have a couple of reviews in "rough draft" form, and am hoping to get them finished and posted in fairly short order.
Today, however, I want to comment on a new tool that Google launched just within the past few weeks. I think this is a huge step forward, but time will tell.
Google Site Maps is a cool utility that is currently in beta test, but open to all webmasters. In a nutshell, you create a TXT file, or an XML file on your website that contains the URLs of all of your recently updated or newly created pages. This new site map acts as an RSS feed to alert Google every time you update your site.
If you want to get fancy, you can also inform Google of how often you update various pages on your site. The idea is to get the googlebot to come looking for those page updates ASAP and get your pages ranked and listed that much more quickly.
I've done two of these so far. I recently updated one of my sites, and discovered Google Sitemaps only a day or two later. I simply created a TXT file I named "site-map.txt", put in the URLs of all of my new pages, and notified Google.
Bingo! The googlebot came calling almost immediately, and has been back again several times. It even re-crawled another of my sites which is linked from the one mentioned above. How cool!
Today, I created an XML site map for a second site, whose structure I just changed. This time, I used a free online tool at SiteMapsPal.Com to create the base file.
I then downloaded it to my HTML editor, and manually input the URLs of the new pages. Uploaded it to my server, notified Google, and I'm expecting the googlebot to visit shortly.
Think you're not up to creating these XML files? Not to worry. Several utilities have already sprung up to do it for you. Google even lists them on the information page you'll see when you log on after creating your free account.
OK ... I've got to get back to work, but I didn't want you to think I've abandoned the blog. Just spent a few weeks in Europe, and another week recuperating and going through my mail.
More later ...
posted by John at
5:00 PM
