sitemap

A sitemap is a list of pages of a web site within a domain.

There are three primary kinds of sitemap:
* Sitemaps used during the planning of a website by its designers.
* Human-visible listings, typically hierarchical, of the pages on a site.
* Structured listings intended for web crawlers such as search engines.

Types of sitemaps

Sitemaps may be addressed to users or to software.

Many sites have user-visible sitemaps which present a systematic view, typically hierarchical, of the site. These are intended to help visitors find specific pages, and can also be used by crawlers. They also act as a navigation aid by providing an overview of a site's content at a single glance.
Alphabetically organized sitemaps, sometimes called site indexes, are a different approach.

For use by search engines and other crawlers, there is a structured format, the XML Sitemap, which lists the pages in a site, their relative importance, and how often they are updated. This is pointed to from the robots.txt file and is typically called sitemap.xml. The structured format is particularly important for websites which include pages that are not accessible through links from other pages, but only through the site's search tools or by dynamic construction of URLs in JavaScript or Adobe Flash.

XML sitemaps

Google introduced the Sitemaps protocol so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The Sitemap files contains URLs to these pages so that web crawlers can find them. Bing, Google, Yahoo and Ask now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.

Since the major search engines use the same protocol, having a Sitemap lets them have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. Google Webmaster Tools allow a website owner to upload a sitemap that Google will crawl, or they can accomplish the same thing with the robots.txt file.

XML Sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now, web developers submit a Sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it. Regularly, submitting an updated sitemap when new pages are published may allow search engines to find and index those pages more quickly than it would by finding the pages on its own.

Benefits of XML sitemaps to search-optimize

XML sitemaps are a way to tell search engines about the pages on your website that they may not otherwise discover through their normal crawl process. They help search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your website and make it easier for them to index your content.

There are several benefits to using XML sitemaps for search optimization:

# Improved crawl efficiency: XML sitemaps provide a list of all the URLs on your website, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your content. This can help improve the efficiency of the crawl process and ensure that search engines discover all the pages on your site.
# Enhanced visibility: XML sitemaps can help search engines discover pages that may not be easily accessible through normal crawling processes, such as pages that are deep in the site hierarchy or have low link popularity. By including these pages in an XML sitemap, you can improve their visibility in search results.
# Better organization: XML sitemaps allow you to specify the hierarchy and organization of your website, which can help search engines understand the relationship between different pages and understand the overall structure of your site.
# Easier updates: If you make changes to your website, you can use an XML sitemap to alert search engines to the updates and ensure that they are quickly reflected in search results.

Overall, XML sitemaps can be a useful tool for search optimization, helping to improve the visibility and organization of your website in search results.

Generate XML Sitemap Like this:



https://www.example.com/
2022-12-25
daily
1.0


https://www.example.com/products
2022-12-24
weekly
0.9


https://www.example.com/about
2022-12-23
monthly
0.8

See also

* Biositemap, a protocol for broadcasting and disseminating information about computational biology resources (data, software tools and web-services)
* Contact page
* Home page
* Index (search engine)
* Link page
* Search engine optimization
* Sitemaps, an XML standard for URL inclusion
* Web indexing
* XML

References

External links

Common Official Website
- Jointly maintained website by Google, Yahoo, MSN for an XML sitemap format.
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Search engine optimization
Information architecture
Web navigation