Google Sitemaps - The How-To What-Is FAQ

The inofficial Google Sitemaps Frequently Asked Questions

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.

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Google Sitemaps Rundown

What Google Sitemaps is all about: Aimed crawling makes Google's search results fresh, and Webmasters happy.

Can a Google Sitemap destroy my search engine placements?

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.

Can I remove deleted pages in Google's index via XML Sitemap?

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.

Will a Google Sitemap increase my PageRank?

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.

Can I escape the 'sandbox effect' with a Google Sitemap?

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.

What is the best tool to create a Google Sitemap for my Web site?

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.

What is the time table of a Google Sitemap submission?

Breaking up the anatomy of the Google Sitemaps submission process leads to a time table, and answers a lot of related questions.

How long does it take to get indexed by Google?

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.

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Author: Sebastian
Last Update: Friday, October 28, 2005 [DRAFT] Web Feed

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