A site map of what links from the English Wikipedia's Main Page.

Sitemap of Google

While some developers argue that site index is a more appropriately used term to relay page function, web visitors are used to seeing each term and generally associate both as one and the same. However, a site index is often used to mean an A-Z index that provides access to particular content, while a site map provides a general top-down view of the overall site contents.

Benefits of sitemaps

Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses Adobe Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

Most search engines will only follow a finite number of links from a page, so if a site is very large, the site map may be required so that search engines and visitors can access all content on the site.

XML sitemaps

Google introduced Google Sitemaps so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The sitemap files can then be used to indicate to a web crawler how such pages can be found.
Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.

Since MSN, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the same protocol, having a sitemap lets the four biggest search engines have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. However, a sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire site. ^[2]

XML sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now web developers submit a sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.

See also

• Sitemaps, a standard for URL inclusion
• Biositemap, a protocol for broadcasting and disseminating information about computational biology resources (data, software tools and web-services).

References

• Specification of the common XML format.

External links

• Common Official Website - Jointly maintained website by Google, Yahoo, MSN for an XML sitemap format.
• Tips about Sitemaps Build a sitemap at a mouse click with an open-source sitemap generator (XML, text or HTML).
• JSiteMap A Java open source site map generator.

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