Google Sitemaps

[blackice]

Hello everyone!
In order to get Google crawl all my site FreshCoffeeShop, I have used Google Sitemaps. I used a program Quick RSS Generator, created a basic RSS file and then submitted it to Google. OK. And now you wonder which is the question, right?

1. Do I really have to use Google Sitemaps to force Google crawl all my site FreshCoffeeShop.com ? If I have a basic Sitemap html file linked from the main index page is that enough? It's really a pain in the u$$ to create the sitemap file frequently. I have a forum and I continuously add pages.

2. Does Google start crawling all over again when it reads the new sitemap file. I had more than 100 pages indexed, and when Google read my old sitemap file it started showing only 11 pages. So is there a cycle? Read sitemap->crawl everything related to sitemap and try to find new->read sitemap again after some days (if the sitemap is old then problems arise hehe)

3. If Sitemaps really help, is the Google free Python solution the best? I don't want to use that stuff! There's sth strange with it :-)

[redcog]

Hi Blackice
I'm not convinced you need to use google site maps at all. I run a directory based website which has some very deep links, but still manages to be found by google without using a google site map or a html site map.
As long as your links are all accessible by the googlebot, you will be indexed, and if your content changes regularly, you'll be visited more often.

[Donna]

I agree that you don't realy need to use sitemaps. In fact I've heard of peoples sites being penalised after submitting their sitemaps like you where (100 down to 11). This tends to happen when your site does not meet 100% of its checklist (how many sites realy do?).

If you include a good sitemap link on every page of your site and have plenty of backlinks, you should be crawled well/often.

[blackice]

OK Thank you for your very useful replys. I removed the google sitemap and I have created a very bacic, classic html sitemap file, linked from the index page. This way I try to help smaller more inefficient search engine spiders (like the greek ones), to crawl my site.

Thank you again

[bizNorthEast.co.uk]

sitemaps is just an addition, I would get it just for the extra info it provides, such as search words etc..

[blackice]

After removal of the google sitemap Google only shows 3 of the total pages of my site

?????
Do I have to wait for recrawling? I have a PR of 2 and I'm sure it's going to get bigger cause I've made 10 link exchanges the last week!

[Donna]

blackice - it takes more than 10 link exchanges to increase your PR. Plus there was a PR update recently, so its probly not going to increase before another 3 months.

Just be patient and Google will reward you

[blackice]

It took Google 10 days to recrawl part of my site. More than 200 pages are indexed!
NICE! :-)