More on Sitemaps - for Larger sites!

Hi Forum

I wonder if someone can clear up a couple of questions I have regarding xml sitemaps for larger sites?

Firstly, are XML Sitemaps Dynamic?

What I mean by that is do xml sitemaps automatically update as new pages or page content is added to a site, or is it necessary to create a new sitemap and overwrite the existing one manually each time the site changes? And this brings me on to my second question:

How Long is the Wait with Larger Websites?

I know this is a general question, and I’m not even sure how many pages my biggest site has, but I’ve tried creating an xml sitemap with 2 programs but quit on both occasions because I couldn’t see any end in sight. If there was a ‘time remaining’ indicator or a ‘moving’ progress bar, I might have stuck them out, but the not knowing left me wondering whether they were actually working or not. Below are the 2 I’ve tried to far.

Audit My PC dot com (so slow I quit after 7 hours)

Audit My PC seemed to stop after 11,000 plus files. Although the numbers displayed for queued and completed files did move occasionally, they were so infrequent that it looked as though it would literally take days if I left it be. After 4 attempts, I gave up.

Gsite Crawler dot com (a downloadable interface)

This one only displayed movement in files queued and I couldn’t see any advancement in other areas. There was a progress bar which moved for the first 5 minutes, and then stayed at the same spot for the next 5 hours. Once again, the not knowing had me quit the program.

XML-sitemaps dot com (limited to 500 pages)

This online xml site creator was quick and easy for my small sites. A thumbs up for sites with 500 pages or less.

So if anyone has any suggestions for creating a sitemap for my biggest site (fee or free), please let me know as I would like to get an xml site map for this site now. Also, this site has new pages created by members weekly, so if the sitemap is not dynamic, I guess this would mean going through the painstaking recreation of a new sitemap regularly.

Thanks in advance for any feedback to this post.

andii

 

Review the Google Sitemap FAQ sticky I wrote at the top of this sub-forum, will explain all these questions and give you links to more sitemap creators.

 

Thank ssandecki.

Yes, that post is very useful and informative , but my main question was really seeking advice from those with larger sites and overcoming or understating the time issue. I'm not sure if my site is generating problems, but nothings reported on the couple of interfaces i've tried, but it just seems like they are not working or that they could take days to complete.

And then there's the issue of going through the whole process again whenever the site's content or new pages are added (dynamic issue) as my site has lots of updated content weekly.

Cheers

andii

 

Large sites can be very hard - especially when it comes to SiteMaps.

We purchased xml-sitemaps - and the load it puts on the server is excessive to say the least.

It did finally get 100,000 pages indexed in 5 sitemaps, would have liked to get all 2,000,000 pages done, but it's just not going to happen.

 

How large is your website? Do you know?

 

@ ssandecki thanx for the post you wrote i generally use to avoid sticky threads thinking they will be only abt rules but now will try and read them first to know more ...