Sitemap Help!

[saibose]

To extract URLs, you can use Xenu Link Sleuth. Then you msut make a hiearchy of sitemaps so that all sitemaps are efficiently crawled by Google.

[krissy-cca]

Hey,

I'm assuming you mean XML sitemaps here: You can create a sitemap index file which essentially lists a number of sitemaps in one file (A sitemap of sitemap files if that makes sense). See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=71453

There are automatic sitemap generators out there -  if you're site has categories with thousands of pages I'd split up them up and have a sitemap per category.

DD

[StalkerB]

How big we talking?

Probably best grabbing something server side if your CMS can't do it. Check out - http://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators - I know Google says they've not tested any (and neither have I) but they must have looked at them at some point.

Secondly you'll need to know how to submit multiple sitemap parts and how to break them up.

Looking at it Amazon seem to cap theirs at 50,000 and Ebay at 40,000, so I think you should be fine with numbers around there.

Here's how to set up multiple sitemaps in the same directory - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/10/multiple-sitemaps-in-same-directory.html

Once you've submitted your sitemaps Webmaster Tools will tell you how many URLs you've submitted vs. how many they've indexed.

[wazza1985]

Thanks for your help

do you ffel it is important to have HTML + Video site maps as well? How does this make a differance?

[wazza1985]

Is there any way i can see pages that have not been indexed?

Is it more beneficial to include various site maps or just the one?

Thanks for your help!!

[StalkerB]

Is there any way i can see pages that have not been indexed?

Not that I can tell and using site: isn't going to be feasible on a large site I guess.

Is it more beneficial to include various site maps or just the one?

Well, the max files size is 50,000 or 10MB uncompressed (you can gzip them), so if you've more than 50,000 URLs you'll have to.

[StalkerB]

HTML sitemaps are good for users; having 100,000 links on a page though, not so much.

If you can (and certainly with a site this large) if you can do video and image sitemaps you'll help Google get around your site.

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[Lauroca]

Hi! With this file, you can create a Google-friendly sitemap for any given folder almost automatically. No limits on the number of files. Please note that the code is the courtesy of @frkandris who generously helped me out when I had a similair problem. I hope it will be as helpful to you as it was to me

• Copy / paste the code below into a text editor.
• Edit the beginning of the file: where you see seomoz.com, put your own domain name there
• Save the file as getsitemap.php and ftp it to the appropriate folder.
• Write the full URL in your browser: http://www.yourdomain.com/getsitemap.php
• The moment you do it, a sitemap.xml will be generated in your folder
• Refresh your ftp client and download the sitemap. Make further changes to it if you wish.

===  CODE STARTS HERE ===

define(DIRBASE, './');define(URLBASE, 'http://www.seomoz.com/'); $isoLastModifiedSite = "";$newLine = "\n";$indent = " ";if (!$rootUrl) $rootUrl = "http://www.seomoz.com"; $xmlHeader = "$newLine"; $urlsetOpen = "<urlset xmlns="&quot;http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84\&quot;"  =""   <="" span="">xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance\" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84/sitemap.xsd\">$newLine";$urlsetValue = "";$urlsetClose = "</urlset>$newLine"; function makeUrlString ($urlString) {   return htmlentities($urlString, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');} function makeIso8601TimeStamp ($dateTime) {   if (!$dateTime) {       $dateTime = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');   }   if (is_numeric(substr($dateTime, 11, 1))) {       $isoTS = substr($dateTime, 0, 10) ."T"                .substr($dateTime, 11, ."+00:00";   }   else {       $isoTS = substr($dateTime, 0, 10);   }   return $isoTS;} function makeUrlTag ($url, $modifiedDateTime, $changeFrequency, $priority) {   GLOBAL $newLine;   GLOBAL $indent;   GLOBAL $isoLastModifiedSite;   $urlOpen = "$indent<url>$newLine";</url>   $urlValue = "";   $urlClose = "$indent$newLine";   $locOpen = "$indent$indent<loc>";</loc>   $locValue = "";   $locClose = "$newLine";   $lastmodOpen = "$indent$indent<lastmod>";</lastmod>   $lastmodValue = "";   $lastmodClose = "$newLine";   $changefreqOpen = "$indent$indent<changefreq>";</changefreq>   $changefreqValue = "";   $changefreqClose = "$newLine";   $priorityOpen = "$indent$indent<priority>";</priority>   $priorityValue = "";   $priorityClose = "$newLine";    $urlTag      = $urlOpen;   $urlValue     = $locOpen .makeUrlString("$url") .$locClose;   if ($modifiedDateTime) {    $urlValue .= $lastmodOpen .makeIso8601TimeStamp($modifiedDateTime) .$lastmodClose;    if (!$isoLastModifiedSite) { // last modification of web site        $isoLastModifiedSite = makeIso8601TimeStamp($modifiedDateTime);    }   }   if ($changeFrequency) {    $urlValue .= $changefreqOpen .$changeFrequency .$changefreqClose;   }   if ($priority) {    $urlValue .= $priorityOpen .$priority .$priorityClose;   }   $urlTag .= $urlValue;   $urlTag .= $urlClose;   return $urlTag;} function rscandir($base='', &$data=array()) {  $array = array_diff(scandir($base), array('.', '..')); # remove ' and .. from the array /  foreach($array as $value) : / loop through the array at the level of the supplied $base /    if (is_dir($base.$value)) : / if this is a directory /     $data[] = $base.$value.'/'; / add it to the $data array /     $data = rscandir($base.$value.'/', $data); / then make a recursive call with the     current $value as the $base supplying the $data array to carry into the recursion /    elseif (is_file($base.$value)) : / else if the current $value is a file /     $data[] = $base.$value; / just add the current $value to the $data array */    endif;  endforeach;  return $data; // return the $data array } function kill_base($t) {   return(URLBASE.substr($t, strlen(DIRBASE)));} $dir = rscandir(DIRBASE);$a = array_map("kill_base", $dir); foreach ($a as $key => $pageUrl) {       $pageLastModified = date ("Y-m-d", filemtime($dir[$key]));       $pageChangeFrequency = "monthly";       $pagePriority = 0.8;        $urlsetValue .= makeUrlTag ($pageUrl, $pageLastModified, $pageChangeFrequency, $pagePriority); } $current = "$xmlHeader$urlsetOpen$urlsetValue$urlsetClose"; file_put_contents('sitemap.xml', $current); ?>

=== CODE ENDS HERE ===

[linztm]

The problem that I have with CMS side sitemap generators is that it often pulls content from pages that are existing and adds entries based off that information.  If you have pages linked to that are no longer there, as is the case with dynamic content, then you'll be imposing 404's on yourself like crazy.

Just something to watch out for but it's probably your best solution.