http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163 The Inofficial FAQ on Google Sitemaps answers popular questions collected from various forums, email lists and the Google Sitemaps Group. It's meant as an addition to Google's official FAQ, the Google Sitemaps Blog, and the Google Sitemaps Tutorial. Often manuals and generic information are not suitable to answer particular questions, because individual circumstances require dedicated answers from experienced consultants. Google's Sitemap Protocol along with dozens of awesome 3rd party tools form a toolset to enhance crawlability, but to develop solutions one needs more than a toolset. This FAQ and the Google Sitemaps Knowledge Base combine detailed knowledge on Google's related protocols, tools and services with experience from experts in the field who have implemented Google Sitemaps with various content management systems (CMS) and Web sites of any type. en-us Copyright (C) 2004,2005 by smart-it-consulting.com Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:21:17 -0400 Mon, 05 Dec 2005 09:37:21 -0500 Breaking up the anatomy of the Google Sitemaps submission process leads to a time table, and answers a lot of related questions. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=118 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=118 Mon, 05 Dec 2005 09:37:21 -0500 No, Google Sitemaps are are just (mass) URL submissions. If you feel comfortable using Google's add-url form to submit your URLs, you can submit an XML sitemap too. In any case you should care what you're submitting. Junk submissions from your site may have impact on search engine placements of clean pages. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=115 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=115 Mon, 21 Nov 2005 01:19:56 -0500 If your particular question wasn't answered, submit it here. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=116 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=116 Mon, 14 Nov 2005 17:47:35 -0500 Depends. Before you look for a tool, work out a sitemap strategy suitable for your Web site. Choosing a tool sets the procedure to create and maintain the sitemaps in stone, thus make a good decision in the first place. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=113 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=113 Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:38:36 -0500 No, Google Sitemaps enhance a site's crawlability, which is a good thing as part of a long-term SEO strategy, but even perfectly crawlable sites can get 'sandboxed'. To escape Google's probation period (a.k.a. 'sandbox') you must tweak other factors. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=112 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=112 Wed, 02 Nov 2005 10:55:09 -0500 The time to index counted from the Google Sitemaps submission may range from a few hours to never. For Web sites in pretty good shape Google's time to index usually doesn't exceed two days. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=111 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=111 Tue, 01 Nov 2005 10:39:14 -0500 No, Google Sitemaps is a robots inclusion protocol lacking any syntax for deletions. Remove deleted URLs in the XML file, and ensure your server responds 404 or 410 to Googlebot. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=110 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=110 Sat, 29 Oct 2005 14:40:32 -0400 The official answer is no, PageRank adjustments are unrelated to Google Sitemaps. The inofficial answer is depends, in some cases Google Sitemap submissions can have impact on PageRank calculations. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=109 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=109 Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:50:42 -0400 What Google Sitemaps is all about: Aimed crawling makes Google's search results fresh, and Webmasters happy. http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=108 http://www.smart-it-consulting.com/article.htm?node=163&page=108 Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:47:27 -0400