What purpose does the XML Site Map feature have?

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 8:13 am

Is it for spiders or search engines to aid their ability to crawl your complete site?

jmestep · Post by **jmestep** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:35 am

I don't know about other spiders, but from the format of the one that is generated, it will provide a Google sitemap feed. It's similar to the one I use for Google. http://www.anythingxtreme.com/axgoogle.xml

Go to Google webmaster tools and register the sitemap with them. They will crawl it periodically (you can even push it to them when you update it. It is a fast way to get all your URLs into Google without having to pay anything!

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:39 am

As always Judy, your wisdom commands attention.

Thank you - I'll check it out on google and get it uploaded.

Post by **sohaib** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:55 am

XML Sitemap implements standardized sitemap protocol that is supported by Google, Yahoo and MSN

http://www.sitemaps.org

DonAshby · Post by **DonAshby** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:58 am

Does this automatically create a complete index of our site for google - all we have to do is upload it? Or do we have to manually tweak or adjust it? Will it work for both YAHOO and GOOGLE?

Thanks, Don

Post by **sohaib** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 9:49 am

Need to document this also...

SiteMap is not uploaded anywhere. Instead it is accessed by Google, Yahoo, or MSN from your website.

Once you generate the site map it will be accessible at
http://www.yourstore.com/sitemap.xml

Once you have created the sitemap let search engines know about it by submitting directly to them, pinging them, or adding the Sitemap location to your robots.txt file. (http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php#informing)

You can get answers to almost all of your questions regarding sitemaps from
http://www.sitemaps.org/faq.php

AbleMods · Post by **AbleMods** » Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:07 am

I found how to set it up in the Google webmaster tools. It's pretty easy - that's a nice addition to AC7.