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XML Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to tell search engines regarding pages on their website that may be crawled by their robots.
A typical XML Sitemap file lists each URL, together with data in regards to when it was last updated, how often times it normally changes, and how necessary it is, relative to other pages in the site). This helps search engines to more intelligently creep your site.
In November 2006, Google, Yahoo! and MSN joined forces to help a new industry usual for sitemaps: Sitemaps 0.90. As long as webmasters follow the protocol, they may see to it their websites are completely and systematically indexed throughout all the major search engines (a real step forward). This article is crucial for all those with missing or poorly ranked pages.
The official internetsite for the joint effort is at sitemaps.org and holds a lot of selective information with regards to the new standard and it’s syntax. What the internetlocation singularly fails to do is explain correctly how to submit your sitemap to the big three! The format suggested on the internetsite of:
search-engine-url/ping?sitemap=your sitemap_url
does not presently work at any of the three sites! Until it does, this short article provides instructions for how to (a) fabricate your sitemap and (b) how to submit to each of the three main search engines…
Creating your Sitemap
Some hosting suppliers (for example 1and1) provide utilities thru their web control panel, to invent your sitemap, so you must always check with your provider first. If this service is not available, then make a visit to xml-sitemaps.com and enter your website URL into the generator box. Copy-and-paste the resulting sitemap into notepad, then save-and-upload to your internetsite with the file name: sitemap.xml
If you want to validate the XML prior to uploading to the search engines (useful if you have made any manual amendments), look at the XML validator (at the same site) where you may put in the URL of your sitemap and check it versus the standard.
Submit sitemap to MSN
MSN have yet to implement a formal interface for Sitemap submission (as at July 2007). To monitor the situation, please visit (from time to time) the MSN Official Livesearch Blog (where where future proclamations are likely to be found).
Whilst MSN have yet to implement a front door, there is a recognised back door for submitting your sitemap to the MSN Search index; namely moreover.com! You ought to use the following syntax directly in your browser URL box:
[http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://yourdomain.com/yoursitemap.xml]
Since February 2005, moreover.com have been the official provider of RSS feeds to the myMSN portal (see press release) and dependable proof proposes that submission to Moreover will result in MSN spidering your pages within 2-3 weeks.
Note that, whilst MSN still do not support direct submission, they do suggest on their blog that you add a reference to your Sitemap into your robots.txt file (something now supported by sitemaps.org). For example:
User-agent: *
Sitemap: [http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml]
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
This would tell MSN (and all other engines) to creep your sitemap file but not to creep your cgi-bin directory. For more data on how to utilize a robots.txt file (in the root of your web site webserver) please visit: http://www.robotstxt.org
Submit sitemap to Google
Google in the first place invented the XML schema for sitemaps and have devised a committed portal for webmasters, from where you may submit your sitemap:
google.com/webmasters/
First, you need to tell Google all the internet sites you own, then verfiy that you without doubt own them. The verifiaction is achieved by adding a metatag amidst the head tags on your website homepage. The syntax for the tag is as follows:
There are full instructions on how to do this on the Google site.
Submit sitemap to Yahoo
Yahoo follows a similar approach to Google. Again, there is a devoted sevice for webmasters (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and a procedure for verifying your ownsership of the site. First go to:
siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Add a site, then click on the validation button. You may then download a verfication key html file – which you will need to upload to the root directory of your webserver. Then you may return to Site Explorer and tell Yahoo to commence authentication. This will take up to 24 hours. At the same time you may also add your sitemap by clicking on the manage button and then adding the sitemap as a feed.
Submit sitemap to Ask
Ask follows a less sophisticated approach to the other three. To submit you sitemap, you merely enter a ping URL, followed by the full URL of where your sitemap is located:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
After clicking return, you will get a assuring message from Ask that they have received your submission. Very neat!
Sitemap 2
The post-Ajaxian Web 2.0 world of wikis, folksonomies, and mashups makes well-planned info architecture even more essential. How do you present huge volumes of info to humans who need to find what they’re looking for quickly? This classic primer shows data architects, designers, and web website developers how to build large-scale and maintainable web websites that are likeable and easy to navigate.
The new edition is exhaustively modified to address emergent technologies — with recent examples, new scenarios, and data on best exercises — while sustaining it is focus on fundamentals. With topics that range from aesthetics to mechanics, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web explains how to develop interfaces that users may grasp right away. Inside, you’ll find:
- An overview of selective information architecture for both newcomers and experienced practitioners
- The rudimentary constituents of an architecture, illustrating the interconnected nature of these systems. Updated, with updates for tagging, folksonomies, social classification, and guided navigation
- Tools, techniques, and methods that take you from exploration to scheme and design to implementation. This edition discusses blueprints, wireframes and the role of diagrams in the design phase
- A series of short essays that provide practical tips and philosophical counsel for those who work on info architecture
- The business context of practicing and furthering info architecture, including recent lessons on how to handle enterprise architecture
- Case studies on the evolution of two big and very dissimilar data architectures, illustrating best exercises along the way
How do you document the rich interfaces of web applications? How do you design for multiple platforms and mobile devices? With special and significant stress on goals and approaches over tactics or technologies, this enormously ordinary book gives you cognition with regards to selective information architecture with a framework that allows you to learn new approaches — and unlearn outmoded ones.
ReviewIn Chapter 6 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, the writers talk about the details of good search-engine design. In a bitingly humorous segment, they make an analyzation of a Web site’s search-page results: “Let’s say you’re mesmerized in knowing what the New Jersey sales tax is…. So you go to the State of New Jersey web web site and search on sales tax. The 20 results are scored at either 84% or 82% relevant. Why does each document receive only one of two scores?… And what the heck makes a document 2% more applicable than another?” With a swift and convincing stroke, the writers of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web tear down a great deal of entrenched ideas when it comes to Web design. Flashy animations are cool, they agree, as long as they don’t irritate the viewer. Nifty clickable icons are nice, but are their significances universal? Is the search engine supplying results that are utile and relevant? This book acts as a mirror and with careful questioning causes the reader to think through all the parts and conclusions required for well-crafted Web design. –Jennifer Buckendorff
From Library JournalSaul Wurman firstborn applied the term Information Architecture in his book of the same name. His book was for the most part lots of genuinely gorgeous pictures of media and webs compiled from a graphic design perspective; they were beauteous but never genuinely dealt with the selective information end of things. Rosenfeld and Morville get it right. They show how to design manageable internet sites right the basi time, websites built for growth. They talk about ideas of organization, navigation, labeling, searching, research, and conceptual design. This is almost mutual sense, which is often overlooked in the rush for cascading style sheets and XML. Essential reading for librarians and info managers who deal with the World Wide Web in any parts of their jobs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review”Full of necessary information, this is a book that must be required reading for any person working with any web technologies.” PC Plus, Jan 2003
Sitemap 2 Photo
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Sitemap 2 Photo
Sitemap 2 Photo
Most helpful client reviews
43 of 46 people found the following review helpful.
 At last! A concise, practical guide to web website design!
By John Leo Mencias
I had been looking around for a book like this for a lot of time now: one that guides me through the essential conceptual design phase of web internet site development. Most books on web internetlocation design are in truth when it comes to user interface design. This book offers a top-down planning approach to getting from the acknowledgement of a need for a web internetlocation through to the final working design. It plugs up a lot of the gaping holes that topic-specific design texts leave open.
The over-riding concern and special and significant stress in the original division of the book is on how to coordinate the selective information on the web internetsite in such a way that the target audience may readily get at it. To this end, the writers focus on three ‘systems’ that need to be developed, imposed and coordinated on a web site: a navigation system, a labeling scheme and a searching system. Once these systems are thought through and designed then the rest of the work becomes a matter of filling in the data content, functionalities and the bells and whistles.
Clear, concise and even a bit humorous, this book will unquestionably give you a peace of mind if you find yourself a bit overwhelmed at times when settling on just how you will approach building a web site.
26 of 27 humans found the following review helpful.
The best book regarding Web design scheme on the market!
By John Zapolski
With the second edition, Morville and Rosenfeld have met a pretty substantial challenge: surpassing their initial book. The new edition is chock full of outstanding new chapters on topics both technical and creative.
By covering subjects like thesauri, CVs, and metadata, while at the same time tackling headfirst “big picture” ideas of info architecture, the two writers are to be commended for writing a book that is at once instructive to modern practioners yet still recommendable to strategists, designers, programmers, and others who might have only a vague notion of data architecture. And the chapter on business system is as good an introduction as I’ve read in any business book.
This book is the nearest any individual has come to a single book addressing all of the complexity and challenges of organizing, structuring, and managing huge scale Web sites, and does so with clear, easy-to-read prose eshewing jargon and consultant-speak. Quite an accomplishment, indeed!
45 of 50 humans found the following review helpful.
Great 2nd Edition Update
By E. Griffin
This is a outstanding book to introduce business people to data architecture, for architects to reinforce their skills, and for web designers to principles to utilise to web site design. The second edition has more info and is more in depth than the first, and is well worth purchasing.
The original three chapters of the book explore what data architecture is and what it is needed. Chapters 4 – 9, the “Basic Principles of Information Architecture” have the most substance. Several chapters bear reading assorted times, including:
Chapter 5: Organization Systems, Chapter 7: Navigation Systems, Chapter 8: Search Systems and Chapter 9: Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata
The segmentations on Process and Methodologyactice, and Organizational fit are all good for people learning regarding IA, but may be too basic for any person that does a lot of work or reading in the field. The Education Chapter is already out of date, which is to be expected.
IA for the World Wide Web is a great book, worth reading and worth hanging onto for reference or to use to explain the IA to others.
See all 117 client reviews…
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