Sitemap, whats that ?

aquafolie · # 1 (**permalink**)

A sitemap could help some spider to see your pages, so as you can understand it's very important to be seen from these spiders.
For instant I think just google, Msn and Yahoo accept the sitemap.... but they're biggest search engine.
I present you one sort of sitemap (xml), i saw that it exist some others sort.

1. You could have more than one page for your sitemap
2. You must respect the syntax
3. You have to declare it to spiders

Start an xml blank page and put :

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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">

This is the header, if you use php, don't forget to put :
header("Content-Type: text/xml");
on the first line and before any other code.

Now you could put each URL you have on YOUR website like this :

Code:

<url><loc>http://www.yourwebsite.com/yourpage.html</loc></url>

Must be putted before '</url>'

You have to say to the spider the frequency you change the page, you could use :
monthly, daily, weekly, yearly
[code]<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>[code]

You have to say when your page was modified :
The date format is : YYYY-MM-DD

Code:

<lastmod>2007-10-23</lastmod>

And last you have to put the priority of the page between 0.0 and 1.0. For example,
if your index is more important than the link page, you will put 1.0 to your index and 0.0 to your link page.
You can use 0.0 or 0.1 or 0.2 ......... 0.8 or 0.9 or 1.0.
If you forget to use it, the default is 0.5 :

Code:

<priority>0.5</priority>

Full example :

Code:

<url>
<loc>http://www.yourwebsite.com/yourpage.html</loc>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<lastmod>2007-10-23</lastmod>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>

After that just open a new '<url>' and put another URL.
You must finished your xml document by using :

Code:

</urlset>

(see the header code to understand why)

Shadab · # 2 (**permalink**)

Thanks for the info, mate !

GeekPoint too utilizes xml sitemaps.

And it makes a lil' (yet noticeable) difference to site indexing
as the crawlers can find links to pages buried deep inside the site, faster !

And for general users,
theres a browsable sitemap/archive at : Forum Sitemap / Archive

TheBes7 · # 3 (**permalink**)

Thank's for the source dude !
SiteMap ... hmm I will use that in my future site.

databloc · # 4 (**permalink**)

great information aquafolie.. Sitemaps, as much of a hassle that they are, they do get pages (deep) spidered better.