Share your tricks or tips for GOOGLE SITEMAPPER with others!

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When generating a Google Sitemap always check the results for any errors like file not found, image not found and fix these problems before you submit it to Google. When you submit the sitemap to Google they will check the validity of the links in the Sitemap and if it has any errors your sitemap may be disregarded or skipped over on the next scan.

Remember your Google SiteMap is specific to Google. No other search engine bots can read this file. You will also have to register the sitemap with Google and tell them the name of the file and the location, i.e. http://www.myserver.com/google.xml.

It is a good idea to name the file google.xml because you should also have a generic XML sitemap for other search engines to read and it needs to be named sitemap.xml. Search engine bots other than Google will look for the generic sitmap named sitemap.xml.

If you have any other XML files like News feeds on your site block them from the sitmaps, Google does not allow linking in sitemaps to other XML files.

Make sure you upload the generated sitemap.html file to your site as well. Alot of search engines also look for this file because they know it contains all of the links to pages on a website. It is also a courtesy to visitors who find navigation to be confusing, and/or dont have Flash or java installed if you use either of these methods for your main navigation.

I didn't like the solution of creating links to all pages(since google site maper does not scan pages based on Flash menus),and deleting this links after generating the database.
I think I have a Clever way.

I created a page ,named it something like sitetree.
In this page I create a link to all other pages.
Then in the main page I have a link to the pagetree.
Than I change the color of this link to the same color of the background,so
nobody sees it.
So every time I add a page to the site I add a link in the pagetree.

Thanks,
Marcello

Marcello,

Google does not like hidden text. Read this in numerous SEO articles.

Marcello,

J. is on the money. This can directly impact your page rank. My solution in the past is to add the links at the across the bottom of your page or something. Any hidden text can get you knocked out of position. It's because people use this to cheat their page rank by keyword stuffing, etc. I see someone reinvents the wheel from time to time on how to do this, but google eventually catches up.

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