Google Sitemaps

Sitemaps is Google’s newest feature. It is an experiment in web crawling and therefore -as other Google features- still in beta.

It works like charm. All you have to do is generate a sitemap (easy solution for this below) in an XML-file, upload it to your server and give Google the URL.
Based on the information in that sitemap Google will index your site.

There’s one catch! In the Terms of Service, the second paragraph explicitly says: “Personal Use Only”. I don’t think they will penalize you for using it, but you never know.
The Terms further state:

“If you want to make commercial use of the Google Services, you must enter into an agreement with Google to do so in advance”

but the contact link goes to an Adsense Overview.
I can’t imagine that Google makes a mistake like this, but you better be careful.

So, how do you generate an XML file?
XML is just another mark-up language. If you don’t feel like learning that, no problem, there are a lot of generators to do that for you.

This week my email box has been flooded by offers for a product that generates Google Sitemaps for only $97.00!
That may be very nice, but why pay that much money if there are many sitemap generators available for free?

Personally I’ve used this sitemap generator from James Maurer. Everything is done online and all information is available on that page.

Here’s another one: Google Sitemaps

Let me know what you think and how you’re doing. Use the comments to express your opinion.

Warm regards,
Case Stevens

Tags: Google, sitemaps, website traffic