Whether you’re advertising plastic surgery or any other business on the Internet, there’s a new Google tool known as Google Sitemaps that’s sure to come in handy. This is a free tool which allows you to notify Google of any updates on your site. What’s important about this tool is that it provides people with an alternative to Google’s Sandbox, or that long wait before having sites and changes to sites indexed by the search engine.
Google’s purpose in creating this tool is to expand their coverage of pages on the Internet while also decreasing the amount of time it takes to index sites. Any changes to your site can quickly be relayed to Google using Google Sitemaps. There are two ways in which the tool can be used. Changes can be uploaded by first creating an .xml file on your server or they can be uploaded manually by first creating a list of the URL changes using Notepad and then saving it as an .xml file. More detailed information on how to use Google Sitemaps can be found at the following address: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html .
Though you don’t need an account with Google in order to use Sitemaps, an account will allow you to monitor the progress of indexing your changes. Though Google has stated that using Sitemaps will not effect rankings, ensuring that your pages are being indexed can no doubt help.