Google SiteMaps and You
by Trevor Bauknight
Published on this site: July 8th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month...
Last week, we looked http://www.cafeid.com/art-rss.shtml
at the recent news that Microsoft had decided to embrace RSS
in a big way in its upcoming releases of Internet Explorer
and Windows "Longhorn" and determined that this
was a Good Thing. This week, we're taking a look at implementing
Google Sitemaps, a similar technology developed by Google
in order to help you define your site more effectively to
the search-engine behemoth. This is not a ticket to a higher
Google ranking (at least not that we know about); but it is
a useful tool that lets you apply RSS-like control to your
website's interactions with the Googlebot.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the current heavyweight
of so-called "disruptive technologies" (loosely
defined as those that have the effect, if not developed with
the intention, of changing the way we use technology in general)
and its use is skyrocketing among content providers looking
for a way to get their content in front of more eyes and ears.
But RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, a standard
way of cataloging your site's content for third-party aggregators.
Google Sitemaps have a similar function, in that they are
an XML-based way to describe website content in a standard,
predictable way; but they differ in that Sitemaps are intended
for the Googlebot's eyes only, rather than for any third-party.
Think of them as an automated way to make sure Google knows
about your site's content (please note, however, that Google
does not guarantee inclusion of your content based solely
on the presence of a Sitemap file).
This sounds like a very specific undertaking, but the importance
of Google to getting your site's content noticed can simply
not be overstated. And with Google's expanding reach into
more and more areas of Web content presentation, chances are
that you can be assured that the information your Sitemap
provides will eventually find some use you haven't yet thought
about. That's what disruptive technology is all about, and
Google has become one of the more innovative champions of
such technological advances.
Where To Start
The first thing you should do as a website developer is create
a Google Account for yourself or your company. This will allow
you to do other things besides access the Sitemaps infrastructure;
but we'll leave that for another day. Create the account here
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
and then proceed to the Sitemaps area at https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login.
Once you've logged in, you'll see the sparse Sitemaps interface.
Don't be fooled, however, because like the simple interface
to its search engine, this one hides quite a bit of information
regarding the creation and use of Sitemaps, presenting it
in digestible bites as you walk through the process.
There's probably more there than you need to know at this
point, provided you don't have a huge site with a need for
multiple Sitemaps and so on. But if you do have such a site,
the information is there for creating truly complex Sitemaps
and Sitemap Indices referencing many Sitemaps and you can
familiarize yourself with that as needed. For now, we'll concentrate
on what's required to establish a Sitemap for our site at
Cafe ID http://www.cafeid.com.
Like creating RSS feeds, creating a Google Sitemap is as
simple as putting together an XML file at the root level of
your site that describes the site according to the instructions
that Google has laid out. You can use any text editor for
this purpose, but some editors do a better job of helping
you create properly formatted XML files. We heartily recommend
two that cost money, BBEdit on Mac OS X http://www.barebones.com
and Macromedia's Homesite on Windows http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/,
but there are excellent free alternatives out there and when
it comes to text editors, personal preferences take on an
almost religious importance, so we won't proselytize about
that here.
The Googlebot recognizes several Sitemap formats, ranging
from a simple list of URLs to Sitemaps already created using
something called the "Open Archive Initiative protocol
for metadata harvesting", a format apparently popular
with library collections. The OAI protocol is an advanced
XML specification that you don't need to worry about if you
don't already understand. An intermediate XML format is what
we recommend, over the simple URL list, because of the additional
information you can associate with each constituent URL of
your site.
If you do want to just get started quickly, simply create
a text file that looks like this:
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=1
http://www.example.com/catalog?item=11
making sure that the file in question does not include embedded
newline characters and uses the UTF-8 text encoding (check
your text editor settings). Also, your sitemap may not contain
more than 50,000 URLs and all URLs must me fully-formed since
they will be used directly during the Googlebot's crawl.
Getting Fancy
The more advanced format isn't much more difficult to create
and lets you specify additional information about each URL.
The protocol is described fully here https://www.google.com/webmasters/../protocol.html
and is too detailed to explain here. Your finished file will
look something like this, except (hopefully) with more URLs
specified:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
<url>
<loc>http://www.cafeid.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.cafeid.com/art-over.shtml</loc>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
</urlset>
Your Sitemap's location dictates what URLs can be included
in it. A Sitemap placed at the root level of your site can
specify any URLs on that site, while a Sitemap placed at www.yoursite.com/images
can not include URLs under www.yoursite.com/banners, for example.
You can take as full or as little advantage of the availability
of the various additional XML tags available in this format.
Each <url> needs to include at least the <loc>
specification, but need not include the other three, and all
URLs in a Sitemap file must be encapsulated within the <urlset>
tag. We recommend using at least the <lastmod> tag and
the <changefreq> flag to let the Googlebot know how
often it should check your site for updated content. Be sure
to change the date, and maybe even the time, specified in
the <lastmod> tag any time you actually update your
site.
One more caveat is that your URL specifications must be XML-encoded,
similarly to the way they're encoded under RSS. What this
means is spelled out in detail here http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html,
but essentially, what you're doing is converting a URL like
http://www.yoursite.com/view?widget=3&count>2
to look like this: http://www.test.org/view?widget=3&count>2
(Note the substitution for the HTML entities & and
> for the "&" and ">" symbols.)
Done. Now What Do I Do With It?
You're almost home. Upload the Sitemap file you create to
your server and then add the URL to the file itself using
your Google Sitemaps account. You don't need to use the account,
but doing so will allow you to keep track of what you've uploaded.
You're welcome to compress your Sitemap file using gzip, found
typically on Mac OS X, Linux and BSD (normal PC zipping won't
work, although you can certainly find a third-party gzip program
for your Windows box). Click the "Add Your First Sitemap"
link on the main Sitemaps page after you've logged into your
Google Sitemaps account, and that's all there is to it!
You can use your Sitemaps account to keep track of and receive
diagnostic information about your Sitemap submissions. You
don't need to create a Sitemaps account, however, and if you
already have a Google account for receiving Alerts, for accessing
the Web Developer APIs and so on, your existing account will
work as a Sitemaps account automatically.
Google has already played a significant role in shifting
the paradigm of discovering the Web from doing so by following
links to doing so by searching, and the company shows no signs
of slowing down. Subscribing may well be the next paradigm,
based on the flexibility of the protocols that put content
syndication in the hands of mere mortals, and getting your
content cataloged in these formats should be among your first
priorities. The web browser and operating system is adjusting
quickly to this new paradigm, and you should be too.
Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with
over 15 years of
experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation
and maintenance of business and personal identity online and
can be reached at [email protected].
Stop by http://www.cafeid.com
for a free tryout of the revolutionary SiteBuildingSystem
and check out our Flash-based website and IMAP e-mail hosting
solutions, complete with live support.
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