Google Sitemaps for Dummies Like Me!

As my colleague JL kindly informs us, you can give Google a hand in finding pages at your site, using the power of XML and the Google sitemaps generator.

But what if, like myself, the Sitemap Generator Script confuses you?

Help is just a few more clicks away in the Google Sitemaps Third Party Programs section.

So far I haven’t tested them all – the first one script I downloaded in PHP did the trick just fine.

What The PHP Script Does

Once you un-zip the extracted files to your server (or upload them manually or via FTP), set the permissions, and move the sitemaps file to another directory, you will just need to browse to the directory where you uploaded the files in your browser. Change the options if you wish and you’re done.

The site I ran it on has tens of thousands of pages, some of which I didn’t want to appear on the map. So I used the option to exclude certain directoris, and ran the edit option so I could uncheck pages that I didn’t want on my map. This is slower but ended up being worth the trouble of getting the most important 1500 pages on the map.

The version I ran this morning built me a sitemap.xml file that Google found acceptable, and, according to my Google Sitemaps account, was downloaded within an hour of being submitted.

(Since my site is spidered daily, I wasn’t sure if this meant I had been re-spidered and re-indexed or not – I’ll come back and report any differences in my listings.)

I have a tendency to operate new toys without peeking at the manual, so here’s one piece of advice: read through the entire Google Sitemaps site and look at some of their suggestions. I learned after I was finished the process that I could have submitted it in a compressed format, which would have been my preference.

Also, the tool I used generates the map through directories on the server side. Since most of the URLS in my resouce section (another 5000 + pages) are dynamically generated through the browser, I may have to find another tool to make a Google Sitemap for those.

Since they’re already well indexed, I’m not too worried about this, however, if you’re running a content management system or blog that uses mod_rewrite or creates pages on the fly that don’t show up in server paths, you may want to take this into consideration.

I decided to go with the first tool I looked at because it will also allow you to update your map by re-running the script. Very convenient if you blog several times a week.

If all else fails, you can also submit a text file containing all your URLS, though I wouldn’t if I were you. As Google says:

We strongly recommend that you use an XML format such as Sitemap or OAI for your sitemaps, since they allow you to associate additional information with each URL.

If you choose that option you can find more information here.

Happy Mapping!