Site map

Types of sitemaps:
– Sitemap of links from English Wikipedia’s Main Page
– Sitemap of Google in 2006
– Sitemaps may be addressed to users or software
– Many sites have user-visible sitemaps for systematic viewing
– Alphabetically organized sitemaps are known as site indexes

XML sitemaps:
– Google introduced the Sitemaps protocol for listing links
– Sitemaps help web crawlers find dynamic pages
– Bing, Google, Yahoo, and Ask jointly support the Sitemaps protocol
– Sitemaps provide updated page information to major search engines
– Having a Sitemap does not guarantee indexing of all links

Sample:
– Example of a validated XML sitemap for a three-page website
– Sitemaps aid in making sites searchable, especially non-HTML languages
– XML structure includes URLs, last modification date, change frequency, and priority

See also:
– Biositemap protocol for computational biology resources
– Contact page
– Home page
– Index for search engine
– Search engine optimization and web indexing

References:
– Sitemap Usability by Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox
– Explanation of Sitemaps by Tessa Nadik
– Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft standardize against Google Sitemap Protocol
– Joint announcement from Google, Yahoo, and Bing supporting Sitemaps
– Information on submitting Sitemaps by Google Inc.

External links:
– Common Official Website for XML sitemap format
– Sitemap generators at Curlie
– Portal: Internet
– Wikipedia page on Site map
– Categories include Search engine optimization, Information architecture, and Web navigation