Understanding the Google SiteMap Protocol

How to Make Use of Google SiteMaps · Index · Part 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · Expand · Web Feed

First of all, Google's SiteMap service does not replace the established crawling procedure. It's offered as an addition to the old fashioned spidering by following links. That means, webmasters don't need to send each and every URL thru this new channel. Googlebot will still find (all) pages, whether they are listed in the web site's site map or not. Also, Google SiteMaps do not make standard site maps obsolete. Googlebot will continue to follow links from these site navigation elements.

This said, here is how Google SiteMap works:

1. The webmaster compiles a list of useful URLs and adds a few optional attributes (date of last modification, priority and change frequency) to each URL entry. This list must be served as XML file according to the sitemap protocol defined by Google. Usually a file named 'sitemap.xml' gets placed on the web server's root directory. Google accepts plain text files too, but processes sitemaps provided in XML format with a higher priority.

2. The webmaster submits the URL of the sitemap to Google. Google checks it for valid syntax and provides online stats showing the submission state. For accepted sitemaps, Google schedules a crawl using the information provided by the webmaster. Shortly after each download of a sitemap, Googlebot visits the web site and fetches new and modified content. From this point on, the established procedure applies.

3. On every change of content, the webmaster updates the sitemap and resubmits it to Google. -> 2.

It's that easy. Even the XML format does not require additional software nor understanding of XML at all. Once the initial Google SiteMap implementation works, resubmits can be done fully automated.

Populating the sitemap.xml File