Big Three Agree on Sitemaps
It's very rare to see three competitors from a major
industry join forces to reach a common goal. Could
you imagine Ford, Chevrolet, and Chrysler jointly
developing a new car? But it has happened -- Google,
Yahoo, and MSN have teamed up on sitemaps. Sitemapping
has been gaining steam ever since Google introduced
the program last year. Yahoo followed suit with a
similar program, while Google continued to add additional
functionality. In its simplest form, a sitemap is
an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with
additional metadata about each URL (when it was last
updated, how often it usually changes, and how important
it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that
search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
It is in the best interests of the search engines
to help webmasters make their sites more accessible
so they can improve their indexes by adding more content;
it's just surprising that the engines decided to make
things easier on webmasters by creating a unified
standard. Additional information about the program
can be found at Sitemaps.org.
Google's Free Custom Search
Engine
Google has released a free new product called Custom
Search Engine, which allows users to create customizable
search engines for their own websites. It provides
options for selecting what sites and pages will be
included in the search results and also allows for
modifications to the look of the engine so that it
will match up with a website's design and color schemes.
The search engine works in the same way as Google
Co-op, by allowing users to annotate web pages with
tags. Users will want to tag pages to refine the results
their engine provides, while the tags will benefit
Google by helping it improve its regular search results.
On-site search engines can also be a tremendous source
of data -- you only have to review the queries entered
to tell what consumers are looking for on your site.
Meta Descriptions -- The American
Way
Yahoo has finally joined MSN and Google in offering
websites the freedom to use whatever meta description
they please. After giving careful thought to writing
a compelling meta description for your home page,
the last thing you want is a for a search engine to
replace your work with a bland description from a
directory listing. Sometimes, search engines will
swap out a site's title and description for its listing
information in the Open Directory Project (ODP). The
engines have recognized a new meta tag that prevents
your marketing message from being exchanged with generic
information. By entering META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP"
in your code, your title and description will remain
untouched. There are also rumors that Yahoo is developing
a similar tag that would prevent Yahoo Directory data
from causing the change.