How come nobody has thought of this.....

I am surprised how nobody has commented on the fact that Google sitemaps is another way for Google to spy on you by seeing who is doing the SEO for each website.

For example, I do SEO for 5 websites which all are non related, yet now I am known by Google as someone who is submitting sitemaps to them through my acct.

We all know how tricky Google is so now they will know who is building for which sites etc.

Lets say a person does cross linking between all of them, they match the crosslinking with the xml sitemaps that are submitted and thus devalue the link exchanges.

Lets think about this logically. There are many many web designers out there, how many people are going to be doing sitemaps??? 1% Is Google going to say "we will not index you until you give us a sitemap"

Is this more a tool of benefit or is it more a tool of another way to add you (the SEO/designer) into their vast database of who's who.

Bye the way, right now for myself sitemaps have not done anything. There is still an error present even though it says "last downloaded sitemap was 4 hours ago"

The best way I find to get noticed is to get inbound links. Build your site wide and not deep. Interlink the linking structure to create a site that has a nucleous (center) and get links pointing to the middle and have them explode the value of the exterior pages.

Those are my thoughts but and you don't have to listen to a word I said. If I knew it all, I would be on a beach somewhere.

 

it is confirmed that last summer Google stopped indexing complete sites until you gave them a reason.

Try starting with a 10000 page site and getting all pages indexed. It is a big challenge.

Personally, i agree with Google when saying "why should we index a site that large that just popped up. How did you create 10000 pages??? Did you copy them??? Give us a reason to index your site and then we will think about it."

 

I think you're overreacting. GSitemaps is nothing more google claims it is: a tool to submit a lot of URL's to google. So you might just as well submit all your URL's using the URL submit form, but as most people's websites have quite some pages this is undoable.

 

spend so much time building a site and on SEO, whats a few more minutes to get the sitemap created and submitted. I leave no stone unturned...

 

Not only that, but there are scripts that will keep your sitemap up to date so google always has the latest version

 

It was commented by TOPS30 at the time as far as I remember but I cant be bothered to find the post.

 

Sitemaps seem to work very well with no drawbacks as far as I am concerned.

Easy to submit and googlebot visits and indexes new pages within days of submitting them, even if there are thousands.

If you are concerned about google knowing which sites are yours then use a different account for each site.

If you have a small site then linking to each page works fine. If you have 50,000 pages how could you ever link to them all in a way that does not confuse actual visitors?

For me sitemaps just mean I don't have to think about 'will this new page get found by google' anymore. Just add it to the sitemap and its fine.

 

Agree with you here, although we have to admit we only know our side of the story...

 

Sitemaps so far has been unsuccessful for me.
I have 3 maps now updated and none get indexed at google.

I am having a hell of a time getting animalcrossingwildworld.com indexed. I have a sitemap for the front end but I am more concerned about the forums there. So far over 10k posts and not even the forum index is indexed. BAH

 

I am not surprised the site is not indexed, it has no backlinks listed in google and a search for the name of the domain only finds 6 results.

The sitemap tool is not a "get your new sites 20,000 pages listed in google" wonder tool. It helps good sites with backlinks make sure all their pages are listed.

If you work on building some links then google will take more notice of your sitemap and index all the pages no problem.

Also your menu should link to www.animalcrossingwildworld.com rather than www.animalcrossingwildworld.com/index.php

If you have that many pages why not install the coop ad network, you will have hundreds of links in no time.

 

i dont understand why some of you really think that with the submission of a sitemap, your site gets popular... also i wouldnt concern about the theory that google might use these information... or are they going to hunt the SEO companies ? for what reason then?

 

I have not many problems with GSitemaps - when thinking before acting.

 

Sitemaps is available to help Google index sites and to help your site get indexed. As much as everyone wants to think Google is going to use it against you I cannot find a reason that makes much since. Google is out to give their customer the best search experience they can get and if you have a good, high quailty site then they are going to help you with their search placement. The only ones I know that hate Google Sitemaps are people that have something to hide.

 

For my AC site it finally got 16 pages indexed and the forums main page. Also I have some linkvault vaultage being pointed at the site so I am sure that helps a bit.

The problem with Google lately is that even though I know ther are at least 100 links to the site google only sees a few.

 

Google sitemaps suck, I mean think about it, you use automated crawling software to generate the sitemap. What so different about that crawler as opposed to the google bot crawler. It doesn't work, only the google bot following the links work. One trick that does make magic. Copy and paste the your xml sitemap into gmail and send the the message to your self. Then open that email and all the URLs will be hyperlinked. Select over the entire XML sitemap then right click and click "view selection source" from firefox. Then copy paste that code into an html file and link that file to any files that are already crawled by google such as the main page. Here's an example:

http://sunnybrook.unsquareddesign.com/sitemap.html

 

I actually have quite a good experience with google sitemap. I have a wordpress blog on my website with a sitemap plugin. In the settings I added my static pages and now each time I submit new post a google sitemap is automatically generated and google is notified. I don't have to do a thing and in a few hours I have a googlebot paying me a visit. It works for me.

 

My first post here and just like to say that I have been learning a lot since I've been coming here for the last few weeks.

My first question here concerns the reply given by dave487 reply#12.

What are the advantages/disadvantages to linking to www.animalcrossingwildworld.com rather than www.animalcrossingwildworld.com/index.php

I don't use php and just building my site strictly on HTML markup.

Thanks!
Aircav

 

i have heard good and bad things about gsitemaps, so i have decided not to use them for now, normally what i do is post a link on a sig like here on dp. It is a very popular site so google normally finds one of my sites in a week or so