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Google Does RSS or How You Can Benefit From Google's New Sitemaps
By Titus Hoskins (c) 2005

Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML powered
Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems more like a
hug than a strong impassioned embrace!

It does use XML technology which allows for the crawling and
updating of your site's web pages. You can even include your
entire web site (all urls) with this indexing program. For
anyone targeting the search engines, especially Google, this
program (still in beta) is a MUST HAVE.

If you require timely updating of your most popular pages
Google's new Sitemaps may prove indispensable. It's a little
premature to assess the importance or impact of Google's new
program but anyone wanting to give their site a competitive
edge should be gearing up.

How it works:

There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps the
easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which you can
download from Google. This is a Python file that you can upload
to your webserver and this generator will create a sitemap from
your 'URL lists, webserver directories, or your access logs'.

It would probably be wise to check with your hosting provider
to see if they can accommodate this Generator on your webserver.
It you have a small site there should be no problem but if your
site runs into the 1,000's of URLs or pages - check to see how
much bandwidth such a system will take up. It's better to be
safe than sorry!

Once done, you have to then submit your newly generated XML
sitemap to Google - the search engine will use this XML sitemap
to update and index your site whenever you make changes on your
site. You will need to have a Google account.

You may also submit text files containing URLs from your web
site to be included in Google Sitemaps but these text files will
have or will be given low priority for the time being.

To get started on your own Google Sitemaps Account you can click
here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

What's great about it:

Besides seeing Google finally grab the RSS wildcard, it gives
you better control of how and when the search engines update
your web site pages. Perhaps, the most important aspect for
Internet Marketers, you can now assign the importance that's
given to any of your particular pages. As most marketers know,
certain pages on your web site are more important than others;
these pages earn money, build your contact list, or direct
your site's visitors in the right direction. In other words,
you can now place more emphasis on your web site's 'bread and
butter' pages. A BIG Plus!

With Google Sitemaps you can decide the importance placed on
these pages by using the priority XML tag. This rating system
is relative - it only relates to the pages on your own site.

Likewise, you can also indicate how frequently your pages change
by using the changefreq XML tag. More or less instructing Google
when your page will be updated or changed. This is a win-win
situation for everyone - Google gets the freshest content for
its users and you gain more control of the frequency of the
updates done with your site or web pages. This may have a direct
influence on the profitability of your web site.

For those who are actively marketing thru the search engines and
keywords - Santa may have come a little early this year. Of
course, the jury will be out for awhile but Google Sitemaps will
probably have a positive impact on your bottom line.

What it means for Google:

For those of us who have been following and watching the RSS
wildcard for the past couple of years - it takes away some of
the frustration and a little of the puzzlement from Google's
seemingly total disregard of RSS.

RSS is not a fad, it is not a trend and it's not going away.
Instead, its importance is growing. It is fast becoming 'the'
way data is moved on the web. One could even speculate that in
the very near future all web pages will have an RSS component
- perhaps a hybrid of 'XML/HMTL' or an embedded XML code that
will work with all browsers, search engines and servers.

For Google to ignore the growing importance of RSS, blogging,
podcasting, broadcatching, the RSS featured Firefox browser,
MyYahoo, not to mention all those orange XML logos popping up
on most of the major sites on the web - is beyond comprehension.
Why Google does not have an RSS search on its main search engine
page still seems baffling. Bringing out a homepage and not
including an RSS feature is just foolhardy (They may introduce
this feature later).

For those firmly in the RSS corner, Google's continued disregard
for RSS became more than a little frustrating to observe. It was
downright rude! Perhaps Google was waiting to incorporate RSS in
a program like this new XML sitemaps? Can this mean that Google
has finally accepted the importance of RSS and they're starting
to make amends? More importantly, could there still be a few
more RSS goodies in the Google Jar left to be announced?

One can only speculate but when it comes to RSS and Google,
let's just hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

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To add RSS to your Site within minutes -download this simple RSS
Report and Guide (http://www.bizwaremagic.com/RSS/Lead_Capture_Page.htm).
Copyright ? 2005 Titus Hoskins of BWMagic's Free Marketing Tools
& Guides (http://www.bizwaremagic.com/). This article may be
freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
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