I'm working on a new site and it should be launched in about a month. I've heard mixed things about sitemaps. Some say that you should add one, while others say it makes no difference at all. What's your take on sitemaps? Are they worth adding to new sites (that are already well structured), or am I wasting my time.
I don't think it could hurt - especially if your site is well structured it is likely you could automate the sitemap file and also use the same process to create a user site map - either way G and others will find your content.
Just my opinion but I think "sitemaps" will be compulsory in the future. i.e. in 2010 no sitemap = poor index. As for today, I think its a good practice to get into.
I just recently place my first sitemap on one of my sites and finding it seems to be doing the job. This site for some reason was not getting its pages indexed by Google (possibly due to dynamic pages) and I noticed only about a dozen hits per day from Google before placing the sitemap. A week or two later... Google hits at least 100 or more of my site's pages each day.
I find Sitemaps to be Gogle's most useful tool (way more useful than analytics). It's pretty clear where your site stands and why it is there in the serps when you see the link data. It is, of course, delayed. Like every other thing they tell us.
I would say that G sitemaps is the best tool they came out with .. great info on the linking texts (very important as you know) and internal texts .. give weird click information but that's ok .. to me sitemaps is a good thing and I make sure I have it on all my sites .. Cheers, Venetsian.
Some people even said there are some disadvantages doing that,in my opinion,if you will spend much time on link building ,don't bother with it.
I'm not sure its that useful also. And the verification check is causing problems with some CMS so i'd say not to bother with it.
I do not agree with this statement. Or at least, I think it's the CMS fault. If the CMS does not allow you to add a meta tag or allow actual files to be read from the web root, it is a shortcoming of the CMS and should only happen rarely. If it's the 200/404 redirect that is at issue, then the website/server is at fault. When 404'ed pages return a 200 HTTP status code, spiders could choke on a site forever. This breaks the basic premise of interoperability on the web. If a page isn't there then spiders, browsers, and many other systems will only know this when they receive a proper 404 HTTP status code. If there is another issue, please fill me in. I'd like to know about it. Sitemaps are as old as the web and do help out. Every major website has a sitemap in one form or another. If your site has more pages than navigation links, it ought to have a sitemap to help guide humans as well as spiders to all of your pages. Just as if you have more than a couple hundred pages, you should have some type of site search box in order to find things easier than a sitemap allows. Anything that makes a site more usable and allows a user to find what they are looking for faster will help your site score higher... with humans and machines.
MaxPowers, i think we agree on the necessity to have a sitemap. But the fact is : some CMS are causing trouble with the verification check from GG. I'm telling from pesonnal experience. Then, if the CMS is in cause, well its bad. If its the server, its bad also. And i'm totally with you on the fact that anything that can help users (human AND machines ) are to be installed by all means. But i droped the XML GGmap for a simple sitemap thats working fine. I dont bother with GGsitemap anymore.
If you are using one of the CMSes that give you problems with Google, I'd love to work with you and get your site to pass their validation. Even if you don't sign with them again, I'll bet that your site does better as a result of sending the proper 404's (unless it's the meta validation you are talking about with CMSes). PM me a domain and I'll be glad to help get it setup. Proper 404s have benefits beyond GGmaps
Sitemaps have not done much for me as far as indexing. I find all my pages eventually get indexed even if they are not in my sitemap. Sitemaps is good for finding out info about your site, changing the crawl rate, etc.
Yep .. I had the same CMS issue for not being able to put the google/yahoo sitemaps verification file, but I fixed that so you can have it in SEO Website CMS. Thanks people Cheers, Venetsian. P.S. I also have automatic sitemaps .xml creator which is handy for this CMS.