Site map

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

Sitemap of Google

A site map (or sitemap) is a representation of the architecture of a web site. ^[1] It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 filing out a form on the search engines submission page. Now web developers submit a sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.

[edit] 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).

[edit] References

• Specification of the common XML format.

[edit] 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.
• / Sitemap generators at the Open Directory Project
• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox article on site map usability