Why Sitemaps?

[txshellie]

So, why does Google need me to upload a sitemap of my website if all of my pages can be reached by spidering along the links?

I thought that was google's main function.

Maybe it's a stupid question but it just makes me wonder.

[C.Whyte]

It's the fastest easiest way to get indexed for one. They also show the spiders how to index your site.

[peterko]

I think it's good to have a sitemap to show your site structure, but you can live without it too.
Google is smart enough to crawl you pages and see how well is your site structured even without sitemap, but as long as "sitemap" is Google's feature, probably it has some value, so it makes a sense to use it. IMO

Have a great day

[txshellie]

Thanks, Peter.

When I added a sitemap to webmaster tools a couple of years ago, my crawl rate decreased and I think it actually hurt me. Of course, google is always hard to figure out

I pulled the site map back then but am tempted to resubmit is since I've moved the store to a new platform and it changed all the filenames. (all have been redirected permanently)

Anyone out there had a bad sitemap experience?

[txshellie]

I decided to fish around and found this

http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/why-an-...ap-is-bad.html

[sniperhiga]

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...n&answer=40318

[morph07]

Originally Posted by txshellie

I decided to fish around and found this

http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/why-an-...ap-is-bad.html

I dont agree with this...

[txshellie]

What don't you agree with?

I decdied to bite the bullet and I just submitted my sitemap.xml file - will be entertaining to see what happens. Since I have all new pages and my busy season is just a couple of months away, I thought I'd try anything to get indexed quickly.

Now I can focus on backlinks......

[RawDepth]

Originally Posted by txshellie

I decided to fish around and found this

http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/why-an-...ap-is-bad.html

He never gave any valid reasons why sitemaps are bad. He simply scolded us about not having any links to our pages. (Talking down to us as well.)

[mabel01]

Originally Posted by txshellie

So, why does Google need me to upload a sitemap of my website if all of my pages can be reached by spidering along the links?

I thought that was google's main function.

Maybe it's a stupid question but it just makes me wonder.

sitemaps makes it more easier to be crawled by bots.

[Natural Elements]

Originally Posted by txshellie

So, why does Google need me to upload a sitemap of my website if all of my pages can be reached by spidering along the links?

I thought that was google's main function.

Maybe it's a stupid question but it just makes me wonder.

There is never stupid question, we all have questions and try to get help from each other in this forum :-)

If you want my opinion, I found useful to submit xml site map and robot.txt to Google when I updated pages on my site. That give a quick indication to Google what is current, because Google will take days to crawl the entire site.

I hope that will help answering your question.

[preyank]

well when u updates the sitemap to google,

1) it helps you to index faster.
2) helps google to index all of the pages instead of finding them after crawling the site and following links one by one.
3) you can also find 404 pages easily or the pages which got deindexed.
4) google webmasters tools also helps you to find, outliinks, inlinks, sitelink, content anlaysis etc facilities.
5) you can check when google last crawled your site also you can set google crawling rate.
6) you can check google page rank distribution as well..

you can find more features by loging in.
hope this helped out.

[webcosmo]

Even if you don't put a sitemap bots would crawl your site. Sitemaps are supposed to aid the bots making sure most important pages on a site gets crawled. If crawling those pages often makes your SERP ranking better, then you should do it. I don't use any btw, took it off.

[txshellie]

I'm glad to see that no one has had a negative experience with sitemaps.

3 days after submission google has my sitemap but says it hasn't actually taken a look at it

But I have an additional 200 pages added to the index - and they are the new pages.

Thanks for all the comments - I've always been a hardware geek.

Best wishes to everyone ranking #1 on Google!!

[geurbie]

Originally Posted by txshellie

So, why does Google need me to upload a sitemap of my website if all of my pages can be reached by spidering along the links?

I thought that was google's main function.

Maybe it's a stupid question but it just makes me wonder.

It doesn't but if you want to get the most out of webmaster tools its a good idea.

[orion_strata]

you will be index faster.

[geurbie]

Give the Google god what it wants and you will prosper!

[vhans]

for faster indexing.

[zeruel]

I handled a site before wherein I didn't get to submit any sitemap... Almost most of the pages were indexed.

[haga]

Your website will be indexed faster. You also know whether 404 pages, not found urls, or unreached url.
I use Google sitemap in several years. Through sitemap, I could know how often googlebot goes into mysite.