One of the new Google offerings is Google Sitemaps (still in beta). https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

This is an attempt to have web developers update their sitemap after site changes so Google can find the file and index sites correctly. Their requirement is to have Python version 2.2 installed on the servers, which I understand you don't have. Is there a plan to install Python in the future? Thoughts?

Thanks.

I haven't played with this too much, but perhaps you can run the scripts on a local staging server and upload the result that since the two should be identical.

It's worth a try - I checked with 3 hosting companies yesterday and none had it. They either did not have Python at all or had an older version and Python is Google's cholce for development.

According to Google this can be done. Their only caution was for very large sites - it would take longer to upload results.

I would be suprised to see a host that has Python installed- its probably more likely on UNIX/Linux based hosting solutions- perhaps they have it at SmarterLinux?

Sorry for the delay on an official response for this. We do support Python on SmarterLinux, as well as our new HostMySite Linux plans powered by Red Hat Enterprise. Generating Google sitemaps should be easy on Linux and we will be glad to assist with that in any way we can.

Now, regarding Windows. We are currently doing some preliminary research on an internal development project to create sitemaps from our control panel. We are not planning on supporting Python for IIS scripting in the near future since that opens up a big can of worms (pardon the pun) in terms of security in a shared environment. However, I think that it is feasible for us to implement something that allows our customers to generate these. Perhaps we could use our webservice architecture to generate these on another server without sacrificing security or performance (I would imagine this is computationally expensive on a big site). If the format is simple enough, we could also conceivably write something in .NET or CF to perform the same task. Take that for what its worth since I'm not much of a developer anymore, but I should have concrete answers sometimes soon.

The good news is that we are investigating and taking this functionality seriously. Google is a leader and we want to give our customers tools to help them be successful. It is also attractive for our own internal use since we have changed our website quite a bit and have had problems getting Google to reindex properly.

I'm also interested in setting up Google's SiteMap but, as said, HMS isn't set-up to handle Python 2.2 yet. I'm hesitant to use other methods or third party software however because of the potential problems (side-effects, functionability). I guess I'll wait awhile to see what HMS does. While I'm not having any problem getting indexed by Google, since my new webpages are usually searchable within a week, it may be the wave of the future. Yahoo certainly needs to do something similar though... for the past 3-4 months they've done a horrible job indexing my site. On about 20-30 keywords, I'd be on page 1 one month, disappear the next, and be back on page 1 the following month. Plus it's now taking them 2-3 months to find a new page. Six months ago Yahoo was doing a pretty good job. Maybe it's a rookie spider they got working my site.

Lou,

Thanks for the reply on this. We have installed Python on our development server in the office, so we can create the site maps locally. I can then upload the site map to Google. We have sites hosted on both windows and linux, so this seemed a better alternative for us. This gave us the ability to create sitemaps quickly and upload them to Google. I still like the option of having more than one way to do something, so being able to create sitemaps at HMS is also helpful.

I noticed last week (end of July) on the HMS control panel they've now offering a way to create a Google SiteMap... anyone tried it yet? Looks easy but as I recall, once the SiteMap is set-up it is supposed to be validated. Without the code though, I don't know how I can independently run it through the validation process. Should I worry about validation?

Our new control panel interface will allow you to create a sitemap in the format that Google requires. After the sitemap is created, it is submitted to Google and strored in the root directory of your website. To do this, we use the Google sitemap generator available for download online. We are running Python on our control panel application servers which allows use to utilize this useful tool to generate your sitemap. Once your sitemap is created and submitted, it is stored in a .gz archive file and can be unpacked and viewed or edited. If you would like to add more detailed information to your sitemap you can resubmit using your Google sitemap account: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps.

Google also has an extensive FAQ concerning the creation, submission and purpose of sitemaps: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/faq.html

Great news! The Google Sitemap tool is now live within our Control Panel! Please read the post in the Announcement folder for more information.

I don't see that choice, is it available only Windows-based server accounts at this time?

Currently the Google Sitemap Tool in our control panel is only available for windows based hosting. We are currently working on adding this feature for linux users. if you are using linux hosting, you can actually enter the python code through the shell command line. You can find information on how to do so from Google themselves here:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html

Hello everybody!

Here is the program that helps to create and manage Google sitemaps if need to do it at your computer using visual Windows interface - WinSitemap
http://www.winsitemap.com

Very simple and fast!

While I appreciate the fact HMS is offering a way (in the control panel) for users to submit a sitemap to Google, and does so free-of-charge, I'm nonetheless left with some unanswered questions. Therefore, being unsure, I haven't yet submitted a sitemap. First of all, I don't know what is being submitted... would it be all the files in the root directory of my website or just my .htm (webpage) files?

Secondly, if one could do all the code generation themselves (submitting it directly to Google instead of through HMS), apparently there's a way to indicate to Google (in advance) how often one updates their website, or portions of their website... being an 'alert' of sorts for the Google spiders. There doesn't seem a way to do this through HMS.

Also, there are the 'update alerts' one needs to submit to Google (about new webpages or webpage changes). Again, I'm not sure if (or how) HMS does this. Nor does there seem a way to identify specific webpages, so instead apparently (by the simple click of a button) the entire root directory is simply resubmitted (not any particular webpage files).

Lastly, the whole process needs to be validated (according to Google). I'd really feel more comfortable if I knew for sure HMS's method was validated.

Having a XML sitemap may be increasingly important too, perhaps because I don't have one, lately it seems Google is taking a longer time finding my new webpages. Once it took them only a week but now it’s taking 2-3 weeks. Without a sitemap, it could become even longer in the coming months.

It's now been one month since my last post (above) and, as suspected, without a sitemap Google seems not to be discovering my new webpages... not even after six weeks. While Google claims to still be spidering the old way, apparently not (or with less enthusiasm). It’s not just one or two isolated webpages I’m concerned about, but Google has yet to discover an entire website section I posted in early April.

While I’d like to set-up a sitemap, and like the simple method HMS offers, because of my concerns (as stated above), I’m still hesitant. I’d first like to hear whether Google is recognizing HMS’s sitemap service. Any first-hand success stories??