Web-enabling the world of business

A Google Sitemap is a simple XML document that lists all the pages in your Web site, but the Google Sitemaps program is actually much more important than that. In fact, the Sitemaps program provides a little peek inside Google’s mind - and it can tell you a lot about what Google thinks of your Web site!

Until Google Sitemaps was released in the summer of 2005, optimizing a site for Google was a guessing game at best. A Web site’s page might be deleted from the index, and the Webmaster had no idea why. Alternatively, a site’s content could be scanned, but because of the peculiarities of the algorithm, the only pages that would rank well might be the “About Us” page, or the company’s press releases.

As webmasters we were at the whim of Googlebot, the seemingly arbitrary algorithmic kingmaker that could make or break a website overnight through shifts in search engine positioning. There was no way to communicate with Google about a website - either to understand what was wrong with it, or to tell Google when something had been updated.

That all changed about a year ago when Google released Sitemaps, but the program really became useful in February of 2006 when Google updated it with a couple new tools.

So, what exactly is the Google Sitemaps program, and how can you use it to improve the position of your Web site? Well, there are essentially two reasons to use Google Sitemaps:

1. Sitemaps provide you with a way to tell Google valuable information about your Web site

2. You can use Sitemaps to learn what Google thinks about your Web site

Do we think that having a Google Sitemap is necessary - absolutely. Anything possible that can help boost exposure and traffic to a site is worth it. CGI Pro always includes a Google Sitemap with every site it creates.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 4:27 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.