Web definition of
sitemaps
A sitemap is a list of pages used by
webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available
for crawling. The structure of site map file is generally in XML format and the
contents must be UTF-8 encoded. It allows webmasters to include additional
information about each URL like when it was last updated, how often it changes
etc. Additionally, there are bit more valuable information that can be used to
fine tune the crawling behavior.
Important Information
about sitemaps
·
Last modified time - It includes the date and time when the file was last
modified.
·
Frequency of modification - This allows defining how often the contents of a url
are modified.
·
Priority level of a page - The priority level allows indicating if a page is more
or less important than other pages in the sitemap.
How To Build a Sitemap
The Sitemap Protocol format consists of XML
tags that are quite easy to build. The minimum required field is the URL and
all additional information is optional.
·
The Head Part - As this is the
starting section of an XML document so it must needs a declaration as follows
to qualify as a valid XML file.
<?xml
version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
·
The Container Element - The container element in a sitemap is the
<urlset> element and is used as below.
<urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"></urlset>
·
The URL - It holds the all
required information required for a single url and should be placed inside the
url container element.
<url></url>
·
The location - This is the minimum
required element in the URL element and it contains the full URL of the page,
including the protocol (e.g. http, https) and a trailing slash, if required by
the site's hosting server. This value must be less than 2,048 characters.
<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/folder/file.php</loc>
·
The Modified Date - Its holds the date when the file was last modified, in
ISO 8601 format. This can display the full date and time or, if desired, may
simply be the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD.
<lastmod>2009-03-18</lastmod>
·
Modification Frequency - This indicates how frequently the page may change and
following are the valid values fro this tag.
o
always
o
hourly
o
daily
o
weekly
o
monthly
o
yearly
o
never
This
is used only as a guide for crawlers, and is not used to determine how
frequently pages are indexed.
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
·
The page priority - The priority of that URL relative to other URLs on the
site. This allows webmasters to suggest to crawlers which pages are considered
more important. The valid range is from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being the most
important. The default value is 0.5.
Rating all pages on a site with a high priority does not affect search listings, as it is only used to suggest to the crawlers how important pages in the site are to one another.
Rating all pages on a site with a high priority does not affect search listings, as it is only used to suggest to the crawlers how important pages in the site are to one another.
<priority>0.8</priority>
A Sample Sitemap
A simple sitemap may look like as
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><url><loc>http://www.yoursite.com/folder/file.php</loc></url></urlset>
A complex sitemap may look like as
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"><url><loc>http://www.yoursite.com/folder/file.php</loc><lastmod>2009-03-18</lastmod><changefreq>daily</changefreq><priority>0.8</priority></url></urlset>
Limitations of Sitemap
Sitemap files have a limit of 50,000 URLs
and 10MB size per sitemap. To reduce the bandwidth consumption you can compress
sitemap files using gzip compression algorithms. In case of handling very large
number or urls, multiple sitemap files are supported, with a sitemap index file
serving as an entry point for a total of 1000 sitemaps.
Submission to Search
Engines
The following are the sitemap submission
URLs for several major search engines.
Google:
Yahoo:
Bing:
Live:
Ask:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=Yahoo:
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=Bing:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=Live:
http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=Ask:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=
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