Google recently launched a service that allows webmasters to feed Google pages they would like to have indexed. Up till now, webmasters had no control over what pages Google crawled. Webmasters could only submit their homepage to Google and hope that Google would crawl through links to find the rest of their web site. Google’s new service, Google Sitemaps, provides webmasters with a method to inform Google exactly which pages they want crawled, how often these pages change, and the order that these pages should be crawled.

Stop waiting.
Whether your web site contains a single web page or millions of pages, Google Sitemaps are useful for any business with a web site. If you want Google to crawl more of your web pages or you want to be able to tell Google when your web pages change, then you should be using Google Sitemaps.

Google Sitemaps are particularly beneficial for parts of a web site that cannot be reached by Google’s crawler. For instance, dynamic elements behind a search form are particularly notorious hard for Google to index. Why wait for Google to find your web site? Instead of waiting around, get your content indexed faster by telling Google where to look with Google Sitemaps.

Get Started.
There are only two steps to participate in Google Sitemaps:
1. Create a Google Sitemap
2. Submit the Sitemap
A Google Sitemap is an XML file that follows the Google Sitemap Protocol. The Google Sitemap contains a list of URLs and may also contain information about those URLs such as when they were modified, how often they are updated, and how important they are compared to each other.

Download pdf Google Sitemaps – A Primer