Google Sitemaps

Posts: 541 · Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 6:31 pm

HMS Sitemap server NEVER works for me..

I created an account at Google sitemaps, and have all of my sites listed under there. It took about 12 hours for google to download the sitemap, and sure enough my site was index in under 24 hours. Give it a shot with the link below. Very Happy

They require you to load a file on your site first to confirm it's your site. You just upload the file, tell google you have it there, it checks the file and confirms your site's identity. (Maybe that's why HMS's service doesn't work)

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?hl=en

Posts: 410 · Posted: Fri May 26, 2006 2:01 pm

Thanks Jason... I'll look at setting it up through Google once again. The couple of times I checked it out before, Google's instructions weren't all that clear (to me). I just need to wrestle with them step by step I guess. My main concern was getting it done right the first time... it seemed to me it would create a can of worms if it wasn't (why I hesitated using HMS' service).

While it was magnanimous of HMS for offering such a free service, it would seem appropriate they provide some evidence that it works.

Posts: 410 · Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:28 pm

Well, I finally made me a sitemap for Google... although it took me about 5 hours. Most of the time spent was in creating my list of URL's (about 200) using Notepad. Actually, I just created a .txt file (on Notepad) and placed in my root directory (which Google found and recognized). With all the hoopla about needing Python, PHP or whatever, is a .txt file good enough then? Well, it seems so, the following I copied from Google's FAQ webpage:

Text file

Google accepts simple text files that list URLs. As the text files contain only a list of URLs, Google prefers that you use the Sitemap protocol so you can provide additional information about your URLs. The text file must follow these guidelines:

The text file must have one URL per line. The URLs cannot contain embedded new lines.
You must fully specify URLs as Google attempts to crawl them exactly as provided.
Each text file can contain a maximum of 50,000 URLs. If you site includes more than 50,000 URLs, you can separate the list into multiple text files and add each one separately.
The text file must use UTF-8 encoding. You can specify this when you save the file (for instance, in Notepad, this is listed in the Encoding menu of the Save As dialog box).
The text file should contain no information other than the list of URLs.
The text file should contain no header or footer information.
You can name the text file anything you wish. Google recommends giving the file a .txt extension to identify it as a text file (for instance, sitemap.txt).
You should upload the text file to the highest-level directory you want search engines to crawl and make sure that you don't list URLs in the text file that are located in a higher-level directory.
Sample text file entries are shown below.

http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11

Once you have saved the text file and uploaded it to your web server, add the URL to your Google Sitemaps account.

I'll soon see whether this will suffice...

A note to FrontPage users: In order to verify, Google gives you two choices... either (1) place their meta tag code in the head section of your homepage or (2) place a .txt file (with your list of URL's) in your root directory. DON'T do number one... FrontPage will reject it causing a rearrangement of the <head> and <body> tags. FrontPage simply won't allow Google's meta tag in the head section.

Posts: 541 · Posted: Sun May 28, 2006 4:32 pm

Allen wrote:

Well, I finally made me a sitemap for Google... although it took me about 5 hours.

I hate to tell you this now.. Embarassed

but you should have used an automated bot to create your sitemap. I always use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ It created an xml file and textfile (for yahoo) of my site of 250 pages in about 3 seconds. Give it a shot

Posts: 410 · Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 12:23 am

No problem, the website you referred to doesn't produce the necessary list of URL's anyway, just a list of page titles. For a .txt file, I still would have had to do it manually (as far as I could tell).

However it did produce for me an XML file within 30 seconds. I downloaded it and will add it to my root directory. Thank you very much for this information. It was quite simple. It provided everything Google suggests and even told me of two bad links I had.

Posts: 6 · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:46 am

... and after posting sitemap to Google, ALL pages of your site were indexed? Laughing

Posts: 541 · Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 1:24 pm

terias wrote:

... and after posting sitemap to Google, ALL pages of your site were indexed? Laughing

It took a couple of weeks to get ALL of my pages indexed, but after 1 week my index page was indexed.

I wouldn't use HMS's sitemap service though, I can never get it to work, and sites down't get indexed with it. Probably since google requires you to "Verify" your site by placing a meta tag on your site like which looks something like...

Code:

They also give you an option to place a text file on your site with the code within

(You have to keep the tag or file there or your site will be marked as "Unverified" and will stop being indexed on a frequent basis.)

Posts: 410 · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:55 pm

After a year and a half, I've learned to hate these blasted xml sitemaps... being extra work and I can't see they do any good.

While it is commonly stated (in effect) that a xml sitemap will let Google (or Yahoo) know of recent changes or additions to your website, but in generating a new sitemap all the 'last modified' dates for each URL are changed to the current date. At least that's true on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ What good is that? After all, the search engines must still search every URL to see what, if anything, changed.

In reality, without each page having it's own date as to when it was added or last modified, you're just telling Google you've made changes to your website... albeit unspecified changes (unless you want to manually edit the dates).

The only possible way Google could know of recently added URLs is to also know what was in your previous sitemap (to make comparisons). Yet, we delete the old sitemap before we add the new sitemap.

Anyone know how to keep true the modified date for each URL?

Posts: 1020 · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 12:39 am

I've started creating these on the fly via server side languages. For instance, in ASP.NET, I've created a HTTPHandler that, when sitemap.xml is requested, builds the xml file on the fly for all files pertaining to the website with the last modified date of the file and other information.

This has been MOST successful with a custom CMS that I've written so I was able to develop parts of the infrastructure around sitemaps. I've found these to have an impact on website indexing, personally.

Posts: 410 · Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:19 pm

Hiya Josh... long time no see!!

Thanks for the info... although, for me, I hate spending time (days/weeks) trying to set up an automated system just to save a few hours of manual exercises. Only if it took less time to set up would it make sense to me. That's probably why I don't have a steam shovel to clean out my five hen chicken coop. Smile