It is important to use Sitemaps because they help your visitors quickly get to the information
they need, and they help web spiders find your site’s links.
There is no universal Sitemap rule that you can apply to every site. Understanding
different Sitemap options should help you identify the right type for each situation. The
following subsections discuss some of the reasons for using Sitemaps.
Crawl augmentation
Although web spiders are continuously improving, they are far from perfect. Search
engines have no problems admitting this.
Poor linking site structure
Not all sites are created equal. Sites with poor linking structures tend to index poorly.
Orphan pages, deep links, and search engine traps are culprits of poor site indexing.
The use of Sitemaps can alleviate these situations, at least temporarily, to give you
enough time to fix the root of the problem.
Crawling frequency
One of the biggest benefits of using Sitemaps is in timely crawls or recrawls of your site
(or just specific pages). XML Sitemap documents let you tell crawlers how often they
should read each page.
Sites using Sitemaps tend to be crawled faster on Yahoo! and Google. It takes Google
and Yahoo! minutes to respond to Sitemap submissions or resubmissions. This can be
very helpful for news sites, e-commerce sites, blogs, and any other sites that are constantly
updating or adding new content.
they need, and they help web spiders find your site’s links.
There is no universal Sitemap rule that you can apply to every site. Understanding
different Sitemap options should help you identify the right type for each situation. The
following subsections discuss some of the reasons for using Sitemaps.
Crawl augmentation
Although web spiders are continuously improving, they are far from perfect. Search
engines have no problems admitting this.
Poor linking site structure
Not all sites are created equal. Sites with poor linking structures tend to index poorly.
Orphan pages, deep links, and search engine traps are culprits of poor site indexing.
The use of Sitemaps can alleviate these situations, at least temporarily, to give you
enough time to fix the root of the problem.
Crawling frequency
One of the biggest benefits of using Sitemaps is in timely crawls or recrawls of your site
(or just specific pages). XML Sitemap documents let you tell crawlers how often they
should read each page.
Sites using Sitemaps tend to be crawled faster on Yahoo! and Google. It takes Google
and Yahoo! minutes to respond to Sitemap submissions or resubmissions. This can be
very helpful for news sites, e-commerce sites, blogs, and any other sites that are constantly
updating or adding new content.
