Big 3 Search Engines Team Up On Sitemaps

[Webnauts]

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced they'll support the Sitemaps format (which originated as Google Sitemaps) together. More...

Don't miss this video too!

[incrediblehelp]

This is great news!

[incrediblehelp]

This is from joint website, http://www.sitemaps.org/:

http://www.sitemaps.org/faq.html#faq_after_submission

What do I do after I create my Sitemap?

Once you have created the Sitemap file and placed it on your webserver, you submit it to search engines that support the Sitemaps protocol. The search engines can then retrieve your Sitemap and make the URLs available to their crawlers. Refer to each search engine's documentation for more information about submitting to them. You can also submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request (replace <searchengine_URL> with the URL provided by the search engine):
Issue your request to the following URL:

<searchengine_URL>/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

For example, if your Sitemap is located at http://www.example.com/sitemap.gz, your URL will become:

<searchengine_URL>/ping?sitemap=http://www.example.com/sitemap.gz

URL encode everything after the /ping?sitemap=:

<searchengine_URL>/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yoursite.com%2Fsitem ap.gz

You can issue the HTTP request using wget, curl, or another mechanism of your choosing. A successful request will return an HTTP 200 response code; if you receive a different response, you should resubmit your request. The HTTP 200 response code only indicates that the search engine has received your Sitemap, not that the Sitemap itself or the URLs contained in it were valid. An easy way to do this is to set up an automated job to generate and submit Sitemaps on a regular basis.

Note: If you are providing a Sitemap index file, you only need to issue one HTTP request that includes the location of the Sitemap index file; you do not need to issue individual requests for each Sitemap listed in the index.

I tried submitting a sitemap tonight at Yahoo and Google, but it doesnt seem to be working yet.

[Webnauts]

The <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> does not exist. Or did I miss something?

[incrediblehelp]

Still not working for me.

[Webnauts]

Thanks Jaan. Good that I have not implemented it yet. :)

[incrediblehelp]

Anyone having luck with this yet?

Any find any "one" click programs that create the properly formatted sitemap for sitemaps.org?

[Webnauts]

Jaan I had a discussion with my admin, and he said it does not need to validate, as far SE are happy with their site map.

It could only validate XML if the namespace existed, but it does not.

I followed their wish, submitted to Google, and the result was ok.

We can all go for it. :)

AMEN.

[mantawebsolutions]

Webnauts, what are you saying exactly in terms of validating ? Are you talking about the current protocol standard set in the <urlset> tag ?

Sitemaps.org shows it as follow :
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

while xml-sitemaps.com shows it as :
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84
http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84/sitemap.xsd">

can we use either or do we switch to the first as shown by sitemaps.org ?

[Webnauts]

You can use for Google both options. I tried the first option and it was accepted.

If you use the second option, that will be only valid for google.

So if you want a global sitemap for all 3 major SE, the you should take the first option.

Don't care about its validation.

[mantawebsolutions]

thanks webnauts

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by mantawebsolutions

thanks webnauts

I hope you are aware that you are always welcome. :)

[mantawebsolutions]

I know, thanks for that too :)

[jltidwell]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Anyone having luck with this yet?

Any find any "one" click programs that create the properly formatted sitemap for sitemaps.org?

The only one I've been able to find is a WordPress plugin. Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress. I've implemented it on both my WP (v 2.05) powered sites and it works very well.

If I find anything for non-WP sites, I'll come back and post it.

Jennifer

[jltidwell]

Google Sitemap Generator - Python script that has to be installed on your server.

Here's a list I got from a Google search.

Hope that helps.

Jennifer

[crush123]

i have already submitted sitemaps to gogle and yahoo.
but dont find where to submit such sitemaps to MSN.

i have placed links as text files and submitted as sitemap.
google and yahoo reported that they have processed the site map and the status is ok. but they have not revisited the pages in the sitemap.

will search engines visit the pages after submitting sitemap?
thanks

[Webnauts]

MSN did not announced how to submit a site map yet, however here are the places to watch:
http://search.msn.com.my/docs/siteowner.aspx?FORM=WMSM2 And site owner help:
http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/arc...-sitemaps.aspx

[WebGeek182]

If you need a good sitemap generator...download the free one from: http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by WebGeek182

If you need a good sitemap generator...download the free one from: http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/

Great Script! Her also shows a warning when pages are larger than 100000 bytes.

Thanks buddy. I will pass it over to my chief programmer, to check if it is secure to install it on our server.

[Conficio]

Hi there,
didn't the big three also announce back then a "ping" feature to update content on the site (or the sitemap)?

I'm still puzzled what the URLs are for ping feature. Has any body figured that out?

K<o>

[WebGeek182]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Great Script! Her also shows a warning when pages are larger than 100000 bytes.

Thanks buddy. I will pass it over to my chief programmer, to check if it is secure to install it on our server.

You are very welcome! Glad to help. I really like that script. Been using it for a while and it's quite handy. I think if you simply password protect your directory you won't have any security issues.