I'm trying an experiment with one of my Blogs. I have noticed that Google Search turns off traffic to my blog like a spigot when I haven't created a blog entry in a week or more. As soon as I start a period of frequent posting, the traffic comes flowing again from Google. Other engines do not display this behavior (MSN, Yahoo, AOL...). Question is - if I remove atom.xml as the sitemap (which identifies my site as a blog) in Webmaster tools and just let Google spider the site, will the off/on traffic pattern become more steady regardless of my posting frequency? My theory is that Google treats blogs and websites (which are more static) differently and reduces or stops traffic when blogs go dormant. I have removed the sitemap completely so I am going to see how it goes. I'm just curious if anyone can confirm my suspicions and would agree not to use atom.xml for the sitemap. Also what are the favorite sitemap generators out there? BTW, although my site is primarily a blog, I have multiple frames and have links, surveys, etc., aside from just the Blog content.
The guy who came up with AtomPub - atom publishing protocol for publishing feeds in a specific (atom) format - has been hired by Google.