Site map
Encyclopedia
Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images, digital media and interactive elements are used by web designers to produce the page seen on the web browser...
, or a web page
Web page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...
that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
bot
Internet bot
Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone...
s 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
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
is a document structure and encoding standard used, amongst many other things, as the standard for webcrawlers 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
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
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
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
or JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
menus that do not include HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
links.
They also act as a navigation aid by providing an overview of a site's content at a single glance.
Benefits of XML sitemaps to search-optimize Flash sites
Below is an example of a validated XML sitemap for a simple three page web site. Sitemaps are a useful tool for making sites built in Flash and other non-html languages searchable. Note that because the website's navigation is built with Flash (Adobe), the initial homepage of a site developed in this way would probably be found by an automated search program (ref: bot). However, the subsequent pages are unlikely to be found without an XML sitemap.XML sitemap example:
XML Sitemaps
GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
introduced Google Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps
The Sitemaps protocol allows a webmaster to inform search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. A Sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes,...
so web developers can publish lists of links from across their sites. The basic premise is that some sites have a large number of dynamic pages that are only available through the use of forms and user entries. The Sitemap files contains URLs to these pages so that web crawlers can find them. Bing, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
, Yahoo and Ask
Ask.com
Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...
now jointly support the Sitemaps protocol.
Since Bing, Yahoo, Ask, and Google use the same protocol, having a Sitemap lets the four biggest search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s have the updated page information. Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing. However, a Sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire site.
XML Sitemaps have replaced the older method of "submitting to search engines" by filling out a form on the search engine's submission page. Now web developers submit a Sitemap directly, or wait for search engines to find it.
XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
(Extensible Markup Language) is much more precise than HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
coding. Errors are not tolerated, and so syntax must be exact.
It is advised to use an XML syntax validator such as the free one found at: http://validator.w3.org
There are automated XML site map generators available (both as software and web application
Web application
A web application is an application that is accessed over a network such as the Internet or an intranet. The term may also mean a computer software application that is coded in a browser-supported language and reliant on a common web browser to render the application executable.Web applications are...
s) for more complex sites.
More information defining the field operations and other Sitemap options are defined at http://www.sitemaps.org (Sitemaps.org: Google, Inc., Yahoo, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation)
See also Robots.txt, which can be used to identify sitemaps on the server.
See also
- Search engine optimizationSearch engine optimizationSearch engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...
- XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
- Sitemaps, a standard for URL inclusion
- BiositemapBiositemapA Biositemap is a way for a biomedical research institution of organisation to show how biological information is distributed throughout their Information Technology systems and networks...
, a protocol for broadcasting and disseminating information about computational biology resources (data, software tools and web-services).
External links
- Common Official Website - Jointly maintained website by Google, Yahoo, MSN for an XML sitemap format.
- Tools and tutorial Helping to build a cross-systems sitemap generator.