Newbie On Sitemap question

What exactly is a sitemap and how do I go about getting one for my site?

 

Hah, I just did this the other day. You have to have a gmail account, then:

Oh, any Google account. You have to download a few files:

It is all explained here Using the Sitemap Generator

I used an online generator somewhere, but I can't think where! But basically you put your site url into the generator, and it outputs the files for your map.

It asigns a 'relevance' or 'importance' or something to each page which tells google how often to index your pages. Here is part of mine:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- generator="wordpress/1.5.2" -->
<!-- sitemap-generator-url="http://www.arnebrachhold.de" sitemap-generator-version="2.7.1"  -->
<!-- Debug: Total comment count: 3 -->
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
	<url>
		<loc>http://mikx2.com/nerd/</loc>
		<lastmod>2005-10-08T09:51:18+00:00</lastmod>
		<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
		<priority>1</priority>
	</url>
<!-- Debug: Start Postings -->
<!-- Debug: Priority report of postID 13: Comments: 0 of 3 = 0 points -->
	<url>
		<loc>http://mikx2.com/nerd/2005/10/08/best-practices-for-partitioning-a-hard-disk/</loc>
		<lastmod>2005-10-08T16:51:18+00:00</lastmod>
		<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
		<priority>0.1</priority>
	</url>
<!-- Debug: Priority report of postID 12: Comments: 0 of 3 = 0 points -->
	<url>
		<loc>http://mikx2.com/nerd/2005/10/08/habs-in-first-place-already/</loc>
		<lastmod>2005-10-08T07:28:51+00:00</lastmod>
		<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
		<priority>0.1</priority>
	</url>
<!-- Debug: End Archive -->
<!-- Debug: Start Custom Pages -->
<!-- Debug: End Custom Pages -->
<!-- Debug: Start additional urls -->
<!-- Debug: End additional urls -->
</urlset>

Code (markup):

It is very, very easy. If you don't have a gmail account, I will 'invite' you. Anyone who wants one, let me know.

I'll try to find where I generated it!

Ha, here is one : http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

http://www.neuroticweb.com/recursos/sitemap/ also submits it to Google. Whatever happens, you can remove your sitemap anytime from google, and you also have ftp to check stuff out.

Hope this helps, ask more if you are not sure about anything

 

That would be nice.....thanks