Google Site Maps – Flipping the Script

By | June 6, 2005 | Search Engine Marketing

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Google has just released a beta tool for webmasters called Google Site Maps, which allows webmasters to submit an XML sitemap.

According to Google’s website and related blog entries, the goal is to make it easier for Google to index more of the web. Presumably, the major issues they’re trying to deal with involve dynamic sites.

Currently, the only software tool to create Google Site Maps is a Python script hosted in a project at Sourceforge. I would expect that someone will step up soon with similar tools implemented with other languages… perhaps even PHP. (Hint to SitePoint readers… major street cred awaits!)

Also interesting to note is that the Site Maps are being released under a Creative Commons license, to encourage other search engines to follow their lead.

It’s a sure thing that many webmasters will adopt the Google sitemap file, and that application designers will begin building support into shopping carts, content management systems, etc.

Written By:

Dan Thies

Dan has been helping his clients (and friends) promote their Websites, though his company SEO Research Labs, since 1996. Dan is the author of SitePoint's The Search Engine Marketing Kit and also maintains Key Words: SitePoint's Search Engine Marketing blog.

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{ 16 comments }

jphilapy May 21, 2008 at 1:55 pm

I thought I would add to this list of sitemaps. I find xml-sitemaps to be particularly helpful in that it can be ran as a cron job, can auto ping google and also will report all broken links on your site. This software works with dynamic as well as static sites and is standalone if you purchase the unlimited version.

http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=532_1_3_13

Jeff

alfredo June 27, 2006 at 9:42 am

Very needed information found here, thank you for your work

arda June 26, 2006 at 4:48 am

perfect site good information, very nice news and etc… tnx

Sebastian August 1, 2005 at 6:55 am

Comment on a comment above:
“After researching for few days I have collected some of the websites which have the script ready for webmasters to generate XML file, so you don’t have to figure our the PHP/ASP scripts just enter your URL’s and you get the XML file… Check this link below and I have listed all the websites that I’m finding about online generators http://www.info-sourcing.com/Web_Solution_Tools/SEO_tools.htm#google_sitemap Thanks Posted by: Harsha Sarjapur Jun 14th, 2005 @ 8:15 AM MDT”

Harsha Sarjapur has stolen each and every word on the linked page from my Google Sitemaps Tutorial. Evidence:
http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/content-thieves/INFO-SOURCING.COM/

Sebastian

Shri June 23, 2005 at 6:49 am

Hi,

I want to build the google trafic map and for that i know that we need to build google specific XML with all that info. I want to read the RSS from http://maps.yahoo.com/traffic.rss?csz=78704&mag=4&minsev=2, this will return me data in XML and using that data, i want to create the Google specific XML, please help me telling how can i do it ? I want to do it in ASP.net. also, if any sample code is available, please send to me. – Thanks in advance. Shri

dyn4mik3 June 21, 2005 at 4:08 pm

Dan, thanks for the mojo points. Great blog here, looking forward to reading more posts.

DanThies June 14, 2005 at 10:56 pm

Thank you for linking to your page which links to:
http://www.sitemapspal.com, http://www.googen.eu.tt, and http://sitemap.peterz.info/home.php (German language).

Also released shortly after Google’s announcement was a Sitemap tool for OSCommerce:
http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,3233/category,all/search,ultimate

Google’s list of 3rd party tools & code snippets:
http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

Harsha Sarjapur June 14, 2005 at 10:15 am

Hi Guys,

After researching for few days I have collected some of the websites which have the script ready for webmasters to generate XML file, so you don’t have to figure our the PHP/ASP scripts just enter your URL’s and you get the XML file… Check this link below and I have listed all the websites that I’m finding about online generators
http://www.info-sourcing.com/Web_Solution_Tools/SEO_tools.htm#google_sitemap

Thanks

AfterHim.com June 11, 2005 at 5:22 pm

Has anyone seen a script for PHP-Nuke?

DanThies June 8, 2005 at 12:59 am

Go to http://www.sitepoint.com/forums. That’s the blogging system. :D

Eric.Coleman June 8, 2005 at 12:27 am

Show us a screen shot of what your put your entry into looks like ;)

- Eric

DanThies June 7, 2005 at 7:09 pm

Thanks for the link, Eric. Michael Nguyen is hereby awarded 65,000 SEO Mojo Points for whipping that up and sharing the code. A round of applause and mojo points are also due to Arne Brachhold for making it a Wordpress plugin to make Google Site Maps.

Some day SitePoint will have a real blogging system like Wordpress or MT or something. Makes me all tingly to think about it.

Tom June 7, 2005 at 6:47 pm

If you running a PHP WordPress blog/site there is also a plugin (http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator-v2-final) that will generate the sitemap for you.

Eric.Coleman June 7, 2005 at 8:16 am

– edit –

Found it:

http://www.socialpatterns.com/search-engine-optimization/google-sitemaps-with-wordpress/

Eric.Coleman June 7, 2005 at 8:15 am

Not really true that “the only software is a python script”

The latest version of wordpress (in svn still I think) comes with this ability (to generate the google sitemap)

And if it isn’t in SVN, it’s most deffinitly a plugin..

biggazillakilla June 7, 2005 at 2:54 am

Wow, came across this by chance. I should get out of the forums more. :D

I assume this could be the kind of thing that would be great for lesser-spidered forum software and CMS; if so, it could be a great thing.

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