Introduction to Google Sitemaps
Search engines such as Google discover information about Web sites by employing software known as "spiders" to crawl the Web. Once the spiders find a site, they follow links within the site to gather information about all the pages. The spiders periodically revisit sites to find new or changed content.
Google sitemaps are an experiment in Web crawling. Sitemaps are used to inform and direct Web crawlers, resulting in expanded coverage of the Web and faster discovery and addition of pages to the Google index. Sitemaps can be used to provide information about specific pages, available URLs, and changes made. In the real world, Google sitemaps are especially useful for sites that contain dynamic content or pages not easily discovered by following links.
Google sitemaps provide an additional view into sites: they do not replace traditional methods of crawling. For example, Google still searches and indexes sites the same way it has done in the past, regardless of whether or not sitemaps are also employed. Sitemaps simply provide Google with additional information.
Creating Google Sitemaps
In general, users create Google sitemaps by following these basic steps.
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Create a sitemap in a supported format.
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Submit the sitemap to Google.
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Update the sitemap when the site changes.
XML-Echo Sitemap Generator
makes it easy to create Google sitemaps quickly and easily.
Find out more information about
Google sitemaps.
