Introduction:

What are Google sitemaps?

The traditional way for you, the website owner, to get your site indexed on Google was to wait. And wait. And wait. It can take Google months to completely index a site, and then only if there are other sites that link to it. Now Google has launched a new system which allows you to tell Google about your site. You get to tell Google what pages, images etc. are on your site, and Google will use this information to index your site much faster. It can now take days, instead of months to index your site.

How does it work?

The system is quite simple, and consists of two parts:

• Place an xml file, containing a list of all the files on your site, on your site.
• Notify Google of the URL for this xml file

The xml file needs to conform to the schema defined by Google, and if it doesn't it will be ignored.

What Are Yahoo URL Lists?

In response to Google's Sitemaps system, Yahoo has released a much simplified version. Very little is known about Yahoo's system, except for a small addition to the "Submit Your Site" page, which reads, "You can also provide the location of a text file containing a list of URLs, one URL per line, say urllist.txt." We have added support for these URL lists in Rapid Sitemaps version 2. The URL list is a valid file for Google, as well as Yahoo, but it contains none of the additional information contained in the Google sitemap files, most importantly the last updated date.

What is Rapid Sitemaps?

Rapid Sitemaps takes away all the pain of creating the sitemap xml file. You don't need to know anything about xml, or the Google Sitemap schemas in order to use the system simply import your files into Rapid Sitemaps, and well worry about all the technical stuff. You can also create simple URL lists, for use with both Google and Yahoo.

What does Rapid Sitemaps produce?

Rapid Sitemaps will produce either an xml sitemap file, optionally compressed using gzip compression, which conforms to the Google Sitemap specifications, or a simple URL list, compatible with Yahoo and Google, or both. All you need to do is upload these files to your web server, and notify Google and Yahoo of their URLs (you can notify Google at the click of a button with Rapid Sitemaps, but Yahoo requires that you be logged in to their system first).

sitemap attributes