18 January 2012
Google Sitemaps are XML files that list the URLs available on a site. The aim is to help site owners notify search engines about the URLs on a website that are available for indexing.

Webmasters can include information about each URL, such as when it was last updated and its importance in the context of the site.

A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

While some developers argue that site index is a more appropriately used term to relay page function, web visitors are used to seeing each term and generally associate both as one and the same. However, a site index is often used to mean an A-Z index that provides access to particular content, while a site map provides a general top-down view of the overall site contents.

XML is a document structure and encoding standard used, amongst many other things, as the standard for WebCrawler’s to find and parse sitemaps. There is an example of an XML sitemap below (missing link to site). The instructions to the sitemap are given to the crawler bot by a Robots Text file, an example of this is also given below. Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses a dynamic access to content such as Adobe Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

Google Sitemaps Benefits:

1. Alert Google to Changes and Additions to your Website Anytime You Want

2. Your Website is crawled more efficiently and effectively

3. Web Pages are categorized and prioritized exactly How You Want

4. Speed up the process of New Website and New Web Page Discovery

5. No Waiting and guessing to see when Spiders crawl your web pages

6. Google Sitemaps is likely to set the standard for Webpage Submission and Update

Notification which will extend the benefits to other Search Engines

7. The Google Sitemaps service is Free.