Using Sitemap Generator - Good/Bad?

[yousayjump]

Hi all

I recently purchased the full licence of XML Sitemap Generator (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/standalone-google-sitemap-generator.html) but have yet used it.

The idea behind this is that I can deploy the package on each large e-commerce website I build and the sitemap will be generated as often as I set it be and the search engines will also be pinged automatically to inform them of the update. No more manual XML sitemap creation for me!

Now it sounds great but I do not know enough about pinging search engines with XML sitemap updates on a regular basis and if this is a good or bad thing?

Can it have any detrimental effect when the sitemap is changing (potentially) every day with new URLs for products being added to the site?

Any thoughts or optinions would be greatly appreciated.

Kris

[Khem_Raj7]

Well to answer you question. Yes, you should always use xml sitemap also submit it with search engines. It helps search engines to access all the pages of your websites. If fact you can even tell search engines about your most important and less important pages.

It also enables you to tell Search Engines about the content update frequency so that search engine could crawl those again which you update daily/ weekly.

Furthermore, there is no problem if you update the XML file daily as long as you're not removing pages. However, if you need to remove pages, keep them in sitemap for at least one week and redirect old pages to new ones.

Hope I was able to understand your question and answered properly

[yousayjump]

Hi Khem

Yes I fully understood your response, thank you.

We always do sumbit a sitemap file for every site we build however we never really update the sitemap from there on, we tend to leave the search engines to crawl the site in order to find new pages or detect pages that have been removed.  I assume this is a normal practice for many other developers out there?

We always do a 301 redirect for pages which have been un-published such as old products and categories.

My main concern was actually creating a new sitemap file every day and if this would have any effect on the existing rankings, or crawl rate of the site. I guess not!

Kris

[Khem_Raj7]

It would certainly not have any impact on the existing rankings and crawl rate. infact the crawl rate would improve