Effect of new Google Site Map on SEO? Options

[ergobob]

Hello,

Has anyone played with the new Google Site Map?

If your site is already indexed and ranking well, is there any benefit to submitting the Google Site Map from an SEO viewpoint?

Thanks,

Bob[/b]

[bragadocchio]

I'm not sure if there is a benefit to using a Google Site Map if your site is already indexed and ranking well.

The idea seems to be to help sites that might be having troubles getting indexed.

Though, I have some doubts about the benefit of using an index page like this to help. Since the pages can't be found easily, and need an index, they may never get the type of ranking boost that text links to them might provide.

[projectphp]

It is more to get content in sooner, IMHO. If you have, say, a review site for local news, it will help tremendously, as the reviews get in sooner. A lot of searches only ever happen for a few days, like, for example, when a band goes on a talk show and performers a new song. For a few days thereafter, you get searches like letterman band.

Otherwise, for a static site with little changes, SiteMaps is a useful as **** on a Bull.

[Hieroweb]

I have a site that has been sandboxed for a while, I made some changes to the site and added my XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps. I'll let you know if it makes a difference.

[randfish]

I'm looking forward to that Hieroweb.

I think Google has 2 real goals here - 1 (as always) to get more information about the web, the way webmasters build and think of their sites, and how sitemaps and web site architecture is done. 2 - To have a faster way to index some of the web.

[AbleReach]

If Google's new sitemap helps speed indexing, could that help update listings of sites that use frequently updated feed-based content??


Elizabeth

[ergobob]

Hi Elizabeth,

Just from my own experience with a blog and feed, I got a PR=6 very quickly and Google seems to be keeping up with it.

So it may be good for a new site but perhaps not for an established one.

Some folks have said that it is really an advantage for Google in terms of speed in reading sites but not an advantage tot he established site.

Just some thoughts,

Bob

[gemini]

Google visits us every day and caches homepage with the updated info all the time, but I have dynamic site and a few internal pages are being created on daily bases. A lot of the new pages are at least 3 clicks away and they don't get indexed for weeks and sometimes months. I generated special XML feed for google sitemaps that has only those internal pages in the descending order. I submitted the sitemap on 06/03/05 and so far I gained 500 pages in the Google's index - the latest internal pages I can see in Google's chache are from 06/11/05.

Not so bad after all.

[Michael_Martinez]

The site map tool should be useful for people who need to get a lot of content into the index. However, using those site maps, Google has the ability to bundle hundreds or thousands of distinct pages together.

There is no evidence that they will do this. But there is no evidence that they are not doing it.

People who are hoping to promote distinctive sub-sites may find their content all being focused toward a fraction of their targeted search expressions.

It will take time and experimentation, and people reporting problems in the forums, before we can really see what Google is up to with the site maps tool.

I would not recommend its use for a well-indexed site at this time.

[projectphp]

Ahh phoeey. Google's mptivation for SiteMaps is simple to understand: lower costs,better product, free publicity.

Anyone have an idea for their business that hits all 3 of the above? Would anyone here need anymore than the above three to make the decision to implement a new intiiative, or would one need a conspiracy type reason to do it?

[AbleReach]

Google's mptivation for SiteMaps is simple to understand: lower costs,better product, free publicity....

...Would anyone here need anymore than the above three to make the decision to implement a new intiiative, or would one need a conspiracy type reason to do it?

Hey, any one of those reasons are motivation. You could also chalk it up to improving PR, as in public relations.

Elizabeth

[sanity]

Personally I say kudos to Google. Whilst I'm not of the conspiracy mind I do believe in "if it ain't broke don't fix it". In other words for a site that's being spidered and indexed well (and deeply) I'd probably not add SiteMaps at this stage. For all others - hey why not.

[Umit]

i've seen this thread few weeks ago at Barry's Blogs ( http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002071.html ). i think it is time to write my experience.

i think it is beneficial for especially forum sites. i have a forum and as you can imagine, there are lots of crap pages like lastpost.php, member.php, post.php...etc. But surely; the important pages are the thread pages (and their first pages).

i added a google sitemap and nowadays (almost 2 weeks after) i can see the benefits. my forums' hit increased nearly %25 more. i dont think this is becuase of seasonal factors or any other factor.

i dont think to add for my blogs coz google can indexing very well becuase of structure (only blog links, there is no any useless pages like memberinfo.php, lastpost, post, ...etc).

[bwelford]

Welcome to the Forums, Umit.

It's great to hear what a benefit you're seeing by using Google Site Maps. For a website structure such as yours it sounds like an important step to take.

[Umit]

Thanks for your welcome Bwelford. I am so happy to re-join this forum (after few years years). it is really most informative forum in its industry.

Google sitemap should be beneficial in right websites (dynamic, forum, hard to index ..etc). At least, it is a "white hat SEO tool" by Google. lol