Sitemap Questions?

[Old Billy]

I have a few questions about Sitemaps

• Is Sitemap one word or two; Site Map?
• Are there any advantages to using the Google Sitemap Generator opposed to generating your own sitemap
• Do sitemaps help in getting search engine recognition?

[tucan]

I did setup a XML file for Google's Sitemap some time back. The hope was for Google to index the website's catalog.

The work did increase the website's exposure. However it took Google almost 4-5 months to finally crawl and index the sitemap. I'd say expose went up by 25%, but traffic was not heavy on the website to begin with.

[Old Billy]

Thanks for the reply Tucan,

I’ve concluded that it’s easier to generate my own site maps instead adding the google generator. Google seems slow in recognizing new websites no matter what you do. My thinking is it doesn’t matter if you use the google generator or not as long as the end result creates an indexed page.

I’m theorizing if I generate my own site maps I can more easily post portions of the maps on other websites currently at the top of search results. I’m hoping the pages won’t be bumped off the search results, as long as the links being posted are relevant to the content already existing on that particular page.

I figure this method creates a new index page which a lot of updated search bots seem to favor and it also gives exposure to the website outside of it’s own domain.

I’ll also utilize the Description meta tag in conjunction with this theory. I’m not really interested in traffic as much as I am in recognition. Most of my sites are for research, so I don’t want a lot of irrelevant traffic. But I do want people who can add content and accuracy to be able to find the sites.

I guess the only way to see if this method works is a practical trial, so that’s what I’m currently working on.

Kind of off topic, but have you noticed over the past year there’s been a lot more redundancy in google search results especially since their IPO, I’m not sure why this is but the search engine is fast falling down on my list of choices.

Thanks again for your responce.