Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: sitemaps

Best practices for XML sitemaps & RSS/Atom feeds

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Webmaster level: intermediate-advancedSubmitting sitemaps can be an important part of optimizing websites. Sitemaps enable search engines to discover all pages on a site and to download them quickly when they change. This blog post explains which fields in sitemaps are important, when to use XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds, and how to optimize them for Google.Sitemaps and feedsSitemaps can be in XML sitemap, RSS, or Atom formats. The important difference between these formats is that XML sitemaps describe the whole set of URLs within a site, while RSS/Atom feeds describe recent changes. This has important implications:

XML sitemaps are usually large; RSS/Atom feeds are small, containing only the most recent updates to your site.

XML sitemaps are downloaded less frequently than RSS/Atom feeds.

For optimal crawling, we recommend using both XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds. XML sitemaps will give Google information about all of the pages on your site. RSS/Atom feeds will provide all updates on your site, helping Google to keep your content fresher in its index. Note that submitting sitemaps or feeds does not guarantee the indexing of those URLs.Example of an XML sitemap: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
   <loc>http://example.com/mypage</loc>
   <lastmod>2011-06-27T19:34:00+01:00</lastmod>
   
</url>
<url>
   ...
</url>
</urlset> Example of an RSS feed: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss>
<channel>
   
   <item>
     
     <link>http://example.com/mypage</link>
     <pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:34:00 +0100</pubDate>
   </item>
   <item>
     ...
   </item>
</channel>
</rss> Example of an Atom feed: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">

<entry>
   <link href="http://example.com/mypage" />
   <updated>2011-06-27T19:34:00+01:00</updated>
   
</entry>
<entry>
   ...
</entry>
</feed> “other tags” refer to both optional and required tags by their respective standards. We recommend that you specify the required tags for Atom/RSS as they will help you to appear on other properties that might use these feeds, in addition to Google Search.Best practicesImportant fieldsXML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds, in their core, are lists of URLs with metadata attached to them. The two most important pieces of information for Google are the URL itself and its last modification time: URLsURLs in XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds should adhere to the following guidelines:

Only include URLs that can be fetched by Googlebot. A common mistake is including URLs disallowed by robots.txt — which cannot be fetched by Googlebot, or including URLs of pages that don't exist.

Only include canonical URLs. A common mistake is to include URLs of duplicate pages. This increases the load on your server without improving indexing.

Last modification timeSpecify a last modification time for each URL in an XML sitemap and RSS/Atom feed. The last modification time should be the last time the content of the page changed meaningfully. If a change is meant to be visible in the search results, then the last modification time should be the time of this change.

XML sitemap uses <lastmod>

RSS uses <pubDate>

Atom uses <updated>

Be sure to set or update last modification time correctly:

Specify the time in the correct format: W3C Datetime for XML sitemaps, RFC3339 for Atom and RFC822 for RSS.

Only update modification time when the content changed meaningfully.

Don’t set the last modification time to the current time whenever the sitemap or feed is served.

XML sitemapsXML sitemaps should contain URLs of all pages on your site. They are often large and update infrequently. Follow these guidelines:

For a single XML sitemap: update it at least once a day (if your site changes regularly) and ping Google after you update it.

For a set of XML sitemaps: maximize the number of URLs in each XML sitemap. The limit is 50,000 URLs or a maximum size of 10MB uncompressed, whichever is reached first. Ping Google for each updated XML sitemap (or once for the sitemap index, if that's used) every time it is updated. A common mistake is to put only a handful of URLs into each XML sitemap file, which usually makes it harder for Google to download all of these XML sitemaps in a reasonable time.

RSS/AtomRSS/Atom feeds should convey recent updates of your site. They are usually small and updated frequently. For these feeds, we recommend:

When a new page is added or an existing page meaningfully changed, add the URL and the modification time to the feed.

In order for Google to not miss updates, the RSS/Atom feed should have all updates in it since at least the last time Google downloaded it. The best way to achieve this is by using PubSubHubbub. The hub will propagate the content of your feed to all interested parties (RSS readers, search engines, etc.) in the fastest and most efficient way possible.

Generating both XML sitemaps and Atom/RSS feeds is a great way to optimize crawling of a site for Google and other search engines. The key information in these files is the canonical URL and the time of the last modification of pages within the website. Setting these properly, and notifying Google and other search engines through sitemaps pings and PubSubHubbub, will allow your website to be crawled optimally, and represented accordingly in search results.If you have any questions, feel free to post them here, or to join other webmasters in the webmaster help forum section on sitemaps.Posted by Alkis Evlogimenos, Google Feeds Team

An update to the Webmaster Tools API

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Webmaster level: advanced

Over the summer the Webmaster Tools team has been cooking up an update to the Webmaster Tools API. The new API is consistent with other Google APIs, makes it easier to authenticate for apps or web-services, and provides access to some of the main features of Webmaster Tools.

If you've used other Google APIs, getting started with the new Webmaster Tools API will be easy! We have examples for Python, Java, as well as OACurl (for fans of command lines).

This API allows you to:

list, add, or remove sites from your account (you can currently have up to 500 sites in your account)
list, add, or remove sitemaps for your websites
get warning, error, and indexed counts for individual sitemaps
get a time-series of all kinds of crawl errors for your site
list crawl error samples for specific types of errors
mark individual crawl errors as "fixed" (this doesn't change how they're processed, but can help simplify the UI for you)

We'd love to see what you're building with our APIs! Feel free to link to your projects in the comments below. Should you have any questions about the usage of the API, feel free to post in our help forum as well.

Posted by John Mueller, fan of long command lines, Google Zürich

App Indexing updates

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Webmaster Level: Advanced

In October, we announced guidelines for App Indexing for deep linking directly from Google Search results to your Android app. Thanks to all of you that have expressed interest. We’ve just enabled 20+ additional applications that users will soon see app deep links for in Search Results, and starting today we’re making app deep links to English content available globally.

We’re continuing to onboard more publishers in all languages. If you haven’t added deep link support to your Android app or specified these links on your website or in your Sitemaps, please do so and then notify us by filling out this form.

Here are some best practices to consider when adding deep links to your sitemap or website:

App deep links should only be included for canonical web URLs.
Remember to specify an app deep link for your homepage.
Not all website URLs in a Sitemap need to have a corresponding app deep link. Do not include app deep links that aren't supported by your app.
If you are a news site and use News Sitemaps, be sure to include your deep link annotations in the News Sitemaps, as well as your general Sitemaps.
Don't provide annotations for deep links that execute native ARM code. This enables app indexing to work for all platforms

When Google indexes content from your app, your app will need to make HTTP requests that it usually makes under normal operation. These requests will appear to your servers as originating from Googlebot. Therefore, your server's robots.txt file must be configured properly to allow these requests.

Finally, please make sure the back button behavior of your app leads directly back to the search results page.

For more details on implementation, visit our updated developer guidelines. And, as always, you can ask questions on the mobile section of our webmaster forum.

Posted by Michael Xu, Software Engineer

Indexing apps just like websites

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Webmaster Level: Advanced

Searchers on smartphones experience many speed bumps that can slow them down. For example, any time they need to change context from a web page to an app, or vice versa, users are likely to encounter redirects, pop-up dialogs, and extra swipes and taps. Wouldn't it be cool if you could give your users the choice of viewing your content either on the website or via your app, both straight from Google's search results?
Today, we’re happy to announce a new capability of Google Search, called app indexing, that uses the expertise of webmasters to help create a seamless user experience across websites and mobile apps.
Just like it crawls and indexes websites, Googlebot can now index content in your Android app. Webmasters will be able to indicate which app content you'd like Google to index in the same way you do for webpages today — through your existing Sitemap file and through Webmaster Tools. If both the webpage and the app contents are successfully indexed, Google will then try to show deep links to your app straight in our search results when we think they’re relevant for the user’s query and if the user has the app installed. When users tap on these deep links, your app will launch and take them directly to the content they need. Here’s an example of a search for home listings in Mountain View:

We’re currently testing app indexing with an initial group of developers. Deep links for these applications will start to appear in Google search results for signed-in users on Android in the US in a few weeks. If you are interested in enabling indexing for your Android app, it’s easy to get started:

Let us know that you’re interested. We’re working hard to bring this functionality to more websites and apps in the near future.
Enable deep linking within your app.
Provide information about alternate app URIs, either in the Sitemaps file or in a link element in pages of your site.

For more details on implementation and for information on how to sign up, visit our developer site. As always, if you have any questions, please ask in the mobile section of our webmaster forum.

Posted by Lawrence Chang, Product Manager

What’s new with Sitemaps

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Webmaster level: All

Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site. Webmaster Tools’ Sitemaps feature gives you feedback on your submitted Sitemaps, such as how many Sitemap URLs have been indexed, or whether your Sitemaps have any errors. Recently, we’ve added even more information! Let’s check it out:

The Sitemaps page displays details based on content-type. Now statistics from Web, Videos, Images and News are featured prominently. This lets you see how many items of each type were submitted (if any), and for some content types, we also show how many items have been indexed. With these enhancements, the new Sitemaps page replaces the Video Sitemaps Labs feature, which will be retired.

Another improvement is the ability to test a Sitemap. Unlike an actual submission, testing does not submit your Sitemap to Google as it only checks it for errors. Testing requires a live fetch by Googlebot and usually takes a few seconds to complete. Note that the initial testing is not exhaustive and may not detect all issues; for example, errors that can only be identified once the URLs are downloaded are not be caught by the test.

In addition to on-the-spot testing, we’ve got a new way of displaying errors which better exposes what types of issues a Sitemap contains. Instead of repeating the same kind of error many times for one Sitemap, errors and warnings are now grouped, and a few examples are given. Likewise, for Sitemap index files, we’ve aggregated errors and warnings from the child Sitemaps that the Sitemap index encloses. No longer will you need to click through each child Sitemap one by one.

Finally, we’ve changed the way the “Delete” button works. Now, it removes the Sitemap from Webmaster Tools, both from your account and the accounts of the other owners of the site. Be aware that a Sitemap may still be read or processed by Google even if you delete it from Webmaster Tools. For example if you reference a Sitemap in your robots.txt file search engines may still attempt to process the Sitemap. To truly prevent a Sitemap from being processed, remove the file from your server or block it via robots.txt.

For more information on Sitemaps in Webmaster Tools and how Sitemaps work, visit our Help Center. If you have any questions, go to Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Kamila Primke, Software Engineer, Webmaster Tools

Tag Your TV Shows!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Webmaster Level: All

If your website is the authoritative source for the video of a particular TV show, make sure we know about it! Hopefully, you already submit Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds to inform us about video content on your website. We now support additional fields in both video Sitemaps and mRSS feeds where you can specify metadata specific to television or episodic content. This includes the series’ title, the season and episode numbers for the video in question, the premiere date, as well as other additional information. The metadata from your video feed helps us provide more detailed, relevant results to users wanting to view your show.

Here’s an example Video Sitemap entry that includes all the required and some optional TV metadata in the <video:tvshow> element:

<video:video>
  <video:title>The Sample Show, Season 1, Episode 2</video:title>
 &nbsp<!-- other required root level video tags omitted -->
 &nbsp<video:tvshow>
    <video:show_title>The Sample Show</video:show_title&gt
    <video:video_type>full</video:video_type>
    <video:episode_title>A Sample Episode Title</video:episode_title>
    <video:season_number>1</video:season_number>
    <video:episode_number>2</video:episode_number>
  </video:tvshow>
</video:video>

The full documentation for the tags for both mRSS and Video Sitemaps can be found in our Webmaster Tools Help Center. As always, if you have any questions about Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds, feel free to reach out to us in the Sitemaps section of the Webmaster Help Forum.

Written by Jeff Posnick, Video Search Team

Making Websites Mobile Friendly

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Webmaster level: Intermediate
We’ve noticed a rise in the number of questions from webmasters about how best to structure a website for mobile phones and how websites can best interact with Googlebot-Mobile. In this post we’ll explain the current situation and give you specific recommendations you can implement now.

Some Background

Let’s start with a simple question: what do we mean by “mobile phone” when talking about mobile-friendly websites?
A good way to answer this question is to think about the capabilities of the mobile phone’s web browser, especially in relation to the capabilities of modern desktop browsers. To simplify matters, we can break mobile phones into a few classifications:

Traditional mobile phones: Phones with browsers that cannot render normal desktop webpages. This includes browsers for cHTML (iMode), WML, WAP, and the like.
Smartphones: Phones with browsers that render normal desktop pages, at least to some extent. This category includes a diversity of devices, such Windows Phone 7, Blackberry devices, iPhones, and Android phones, and also tablets and eBook readers.We can further break down this category by support for HTML5:
- Devices with browsers that do not support HTML5
- Devices with browsers that support HTML5

Once upon a time, mobile phones connected to the Internet using browsers with limited rendering capabilities; but this is clearly a changing situation with the fast rise of smartphones which have browsers that rival the full desktop experience. As such, it’s important to note that the distinction we are making here is based on the current situation as we see it and might change in the future.

Googlebot and Mobile Content

Google has two crawlers relevant to this topic: Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile. Googlebot crawls desktop-browser type of webpages and content embedded in them and Googlebot-Mobile crawls mobile content. The questions we’re seeing more of can be summed up as follows:
Given the diversity of capabilities of mobile web browsers, what kind of content should I serve to Googlebot-Mobile?
The answer lies in the User-agent that Googlebot-Mobile supplies when crawling. There are several User-agent strings in use by Googlebot-Mobile, all of which use this format:
[Phone name(s)] (compatible; Googlebot-Mobile/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
To decide which content to serve, assess which content your website has that best serves the phone(s) in the User-agent string. A full list of Googlebot-Mobile User-agents can be found here.
Notice that we currently do not crawl with Googlebot-Mobile using a smartphone User-agent string. Thus at the current time, a correctly-configured content serving system will serve Googlebot-Mobile content only for the traditional phones described above, because that’s what the User-agent strings in use today dictate. This may change in the future, and if so, it may mean there would be a new Googlebot-Mobile User-agent string.
For now, we expect smartphones to handle desktop experience content so there is no real need for mobile-specific effort from webmasters. However, for many websites it may still make sense for the content to be formatted differently for smartphones, and the decision to do so should be based on how you can best serve your users.

URL Structure for Mobile Content

The next set of questions ask about the URLs mobile content should be served from. Let’s look in detail at some common use cases.

Websites with only Desktop Experience Content

Most websites currently have only one version of their content, namely in HTML that is designed for desktop web browsers. This means all browsers access the content from the same URL.
These websites may not be serving traditional mobile phone users. The quality experienced by their smartphone users depends on the mobile browser they are using and it could be as good as browsing from the desktop.
If you serve only desktop experience content for all User Agents, you should do so for Googlebot-Mobile too; that is, treat Googlebot-Mobile as you treat all other or unknown User Agents. In these cases, Google may modify your webpages for an improved mobile experience.

Websites with Dedicated Mobile Content

Many websites have content specifically optimized for mobile users. The content could be simply reformatted for the typically smaller mobile displays, or it could be in a different format (e.g., served using WAP, etc.).
A very common question we see is: Does it matter if the different types of content are served from the same URL or from different URLs? For example, some websites have www.example.com as the URL desktop browsers are meant to access and have m.example.com or wap.example.com for the different mobile devices. Other websites serve all types of content from just one URL structure like www.example.com.
For Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile, it does not matter what the URL structure is as long as it returns exactly what a user sees too. For example, if you redirect mobile users from www.example.com to m.example.com, that will be recognized by Googlebot-Mobile and both websites will be crawled and added to the correct index. In this case, use a 301 redirect for both users and Googlebot-Mobile.
If you serve all types of content from www.example.com, i.e. serving desktop-optimized content or mobile-optimized content from the same URL depending on the User-agent, this will also lead to correct crawling by Googlebot and Googlebot-Mobile. This is not considered cloaking by Google.
It is worth repeating that regardless of URL structure, you must correctly detect the User-agent as given by your users and Googlebot-Mobile, and serve both the same content. Don’t forget to keep the default content, the desktop-optimized content, for when an unknown User-agent requests it.

Mobile Sitemaps in Webmaster Tools

Finally, we receive many questions about what URLs to put in Mobile Sitemaps. As explained in our Mobile Sitemaps Help Center articles, you should include only mobile content URLs in Mobile Sitemaps, even if these URLs also return non-mobile content when accessed by a non-mobile User-agent.

Sending Video Sitemaps Q&A holiday cheer

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Video Sitemap webinarVideo Sitemaps

Our entire webinar covers the basics of Video Sitemaps and best practices -- nearly everything you’d need to know when submitting a video feed.

Can the source/content of the video (perhaps a third-party vendor) be hosted on another site? For example, can I host my videos on YouTube and still be eligible for Video Search traffic?

Yes, you can use a third party to host videos. Only the play page--the URL within the <loc> tag--needs to be on your site. <video:content_loc> and <video:player_loc> can list URLs on a different site or subdomain.

For example, here’s a snippet from a valid Video Sitemap that shows content hosted on a different subdomain from the play page:

<url> 
  <loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc> 
    <video:video> 
      <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>  
      <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title> 
      <video:description>Alkis shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every time</video:description> 
      <video:content_loc>http://video-hoster.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc> 
      <video:player_loc allow_embed="yes" autoplay="ap=1">http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
    </video:video> 
</url>

If I’m using YouTube to host my videos, can Google verify that I’m the legitimate owner?

Currently, there doesn’t exist functionality that allows you, as the uploader, to verify that you’re the owner of a video. The issue of authorship is a hard problem on the web, not just for videos, but nearly all types of content.

Because Google owns YouTube, should users who embed YouTube videos still submit Video Sitemaps or is it unnecessary?

Google treats YouTube as just another source for video content -- though you don’t need to submit a Video Sitemap if you only want your YouTube-hosted videos indexed. If, however, you’re using YouTube as a online video platform (i.e., with play pages on your own site), then we do recommend Sitemap submission.

How long does it take for Google to accept and verify a Video Sitemap?

Video Sitemap submission is a two-part process:

We fetch the Sitemap and parse it for syntax errors. This happens within minutes.

We fetch the assets referenced in the Sitemap, perform checks, validate metadata, do more cool stuff, and last, index the video. This step can require varied amounts of time depending on your site and our system load.

What tags and categories are most important in Video Sitemaps or mRSS? Should I create my own categories or is there a list that I should conform to?

Currently, the most important metadata to include is title and description -- both are required. The category tag is optional, and there isn’t a list from which to select.

Do I have to use HTML5 to use Video Sitemaps?
Does HTML5 help with discovery?
Or, if my site is HTML5 compliant, do I still need to submit a Video Sitemap?

None of the Video Search principles change with HTML5. We still recommend using a Video Sitemap regardless of the markup on your site. HTML5 can be helpful, though, because tags like <video> make it easier for our systems to verify that video exists on the page.

If I use an iframe rather than embedding my videos, can Google still find it?

We do not recommend using iframes to embed video content on your pages.

Can I have multiple videos on one URL?

You can. We’ve found, however, that users may not consider it the best experience. When users click on a video search result, they most often don’t like being forced to locate the correct video among multiple videos on the resulting page.

Do I need to specifically create a robots.txt file that allows Googlebot, or do I just need to make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked?

Just make sure that Googlebot isn’t blocked.

I provided a thumbnail, but it’s not being used. Does Google create their own thumbnails from my videos?

We try to use the thumbnail you provide if it’s valid. If not, we’ll try to generate a thumbnail ourselves. We recommend that you provide thumbnails that are at least 120x90 pixels. We also accept many thumbnail formats, such as PNG and JPEG.

Any video filesize limitations?

At this time, there aren’t video filesize limitations on content submitted through VIdeo Sitemaps.

Is there any way to indicate a transcript or closed captioning for a video?

Currently there isn’t, but perhaps down the road.

What if I’m using Lightbox or a popup to display a video; can it still be indexed?

Depends on the use case and how it’s rendered, but if indexing by search engines is important to you, it’s not the safest method. In the Webmaster Help Center, we explain that “When designing your site, it's important to configure your video pages without any overly complex JavaScript or Flash setup.” Most often, for bots, simpler is safer.

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Video Sitemaps & mRSS vs. Facebook Share & RDFa

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Video SitemapsmRSSFacebook Share and RDFaFunctionality of feeds vs. on-page markup

While both feeds and on-page markup give search engines metadata, Video Sitemaps/mRSS also help with crawl discovery. We may find a new URL through your feed that we wouldn’t have easily discovered otherwise.

Using Video Sitemaps/mRSS requires that the search engine support these formats and not all engines do. Because on-page markup is just that -- on the page -- crawlers can gather the metadata through organic means as they index the URL. No feed support is required.

	Feeds (Video Sitemaps & mRSS)	On-page markup (Facebook Share & RDFa)
Accepted by Google	⎷	⎷
Helps search engines discover new URLs with videos (improves discovery and coverage)	⎷
Provides structured metadata (e.g. video title and description)	⎷	⎷
Allows search engines without sitemap/mRSS support to still obtain metadata information (allows organic gathering of metadata)		⎷
Incorporates additional metadata like “duration”	⎷

All this said, if you’re going to start from scratch, Video Sitemaps is our recommended start.

	Video Sitemaps	mRSS
Accepted by Google	⎷	⎷
Been around for a long, long time and pretty widely accepted		⎷
Extremely quick for Google Video Search team to extend	⎷

Sitemaps sectionWritten by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

Video Sitemaps: Is your video part of a gallery?

Friday, September 17, 2010

specificationsHelp CenterHelp ForumPosted by Nelson Lee, Product Manager, Video Search

To err is human, Video Sitemap feedback is divine!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Video SitemapWebmaster Tools

URLs disallowed by robots.txt

Thumbnail size errors (160x120px is ideal. Anything smaller than 90x50 will be rejected.)

Video Sitemaps centerWritten by Jackie Lai, Video Search Team

Video Sitemaps: Understanding location tags

Sunday, August 15, 2010

video:player_locvideo:content_locmedia:playermedia:contentVideo Locations DefinedThe Requirementsvideo:player_locvideo:content_locURL extensions at a glance:

Sitemap:	mRSS:	Contents:
<loc>	<link>	The playpage URL
<video:player_loc>	<media:player> (url attribute)	The SWF URL
<video:content_loc>	<media:content> (url attribute)	The FLV or other raw video URL

NOTE: All URLs should be unique (every URL in your entire Video Sitemap and mRSS feed should be unique)reverse DNS lookupHelp CenterHelp ForumPosted by Nelson Lee, Product Manager, Video Search

Video Sitemaps 101: Making your videos searchable

Friday, July 16, 2010

best practicesstarting pagePosted by Amy MacIsaac, Content Partnerships

Sitemaps: One file, many content types

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Sitemapspecialized Sitemap formats<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> <url> <loc>http://example.com/foo.html</loc> <image:image> <image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc> </image:image> <video:video> <video:content_loc>http://example.com/videoABC.flv</video:content_loc> <video:title>Grilling tofu for summer</video:title> </video:video> </url> </urlset>Webmaster Tools

Sitemap rulesWebmaster Help ForumWritten by Jonathan Simon, Webmaster Trends Analyst

Help Google index your videos

Monday, April 19, 2010

Video SitemapGoogle Webmaster Toolsrobots.txt fileGoogle VideosCNN.com

Help CenterHelp ForumherePosted by Nelson Lee, Product Manager Video Search

Adding Images to your Sitemaps

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

Webmaster Tools Help Center<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
   xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">
  <url>
    <loc>http://example.com/sample.html</loc>
    <image:image>
        <image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>
    </image:image>
  </url>
</urlset>Sitemaps forumPosted by Alkis Evlogimenos, Software Engineer

Tips for News Search

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

How Google Works Tour: SeattleThe StrangerThe Seattle TimesSeattle WeeklyGoogle News Search

Would adding a city name to my paper—for example, changing our name from "The Times" to "The San Francisco Bay Area Times"—help me target my local audience in News Search?No, this won't help News rankings. We extract geography and location information from the article itself (see video). Changing your name to include relevant keywords or adding a local address in your footer won't help you target a specific audience in our News rankings.What happens if I accidentally include URLs in my News Sitemap that are older than 72 hours?We want only the most recently added URLs in your News Sitemap, as it directs Googlebot to your breaking information. If you include older URLs, no worries (there's no penalty unless you're perceived as maliciously spamming -- this case would be rare, so again, no worries); we just won't include those URLs in our next News crawl. Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead
Filmed by Michael Wyszomierski, Search Quality Team

An Update on Sitemaps at Google

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Did you know that the number of website hosts that have been submitting Sitemap files has almost tripled over the last year? It's no wonder: the secret is out - as a recent research study showed, Sitemaps helps search engines to find new and changed content faster. Using Sitemaps doesn't guarantee that your site will be crawled and indexed completely, but it certainly helps us understand your website better.

Together with the Webmaster Tools design update, we've been working on Sitemaps as well:

Google and the other search engines which are a part of Sitemaps.org now support up to 50,000 child Sitemaps for Sitemap index files (instead of the previous 1,000). This allows large sites to submit a theoretical maximum of 2.5 billion URLs with a single Sitemap Index URL (oh, and if you need more, you can always submit multiple Sitemap index files).
The Webmaster Tools design update now shows you all Sitemap files that were submitted for your verified website. This is particularly useful if you have multiple owners verified in Webmaster Tools or if you are submitting some Sitemap files via HTTP ping or through your robots.txt file.
The indexed URL count in Webmaster Tools for your Sitemap files is now even more precise.
For the XML developers out there, we've updated the XSD schemas to allow Sitemap extensions. The new schema helps webmasters to create better Sitemaps by verifying more features. By validating Sitemap files with the new schema, you can be more confident that the Sitemap files are correct.
Do I need to mention that Sitemap file processing is much faster than ever before? We've drastically reduced the average time from submitting a Sitemap file to processing it and showing some initial data in Webmaster Tools.

For more information about using Sitemaps, make sure to check out our blog post about frequently asked questions on Sitemaps and our Help Center. If you have any questions that aren't covered here, don't forget to search our Help Forum and start a thread in the Sitemaps section for more help.

Written by John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Switzerland

Research study of Sitemaps

Monday, April 27, 2009

We've been tracking the growth of Sitemaps on the web. It's been just 2 years since Google, Yahoo and Microsoft co-announced the Sitemaps directive in robots.txt, and it is already supported in many millions of websites including educational and government websites! At the WWW'09 conference in Madrid, Uri Schonfeld presented his summer internship work studying Sitemaps from a coverage and freshness perspective. If you're interested in how some popular websites are using Sitemaps, and how Sitemaps complement "classic" webcrawling, take a look:

Sitemaps: Above and Beyond the Crawl of Duty

At Google, we care deeply about getting increased coverage and freshness of the content we index. We are excited about open standards that help webmasters open up their content automatically to search engines, so users can find relevant content for their searches.

Written by Narayanan Shivakumar, VP Engineering

Using stats from site: and Sitemap details

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Webmaster Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Every now and then in the webmaster blogosphere and forums, this issue comes up: when a webmaster performs a [site:example.com] query on their website, the number of indexed results differs from what is displayed in their Sitemaps report in Webmaster Tools. Such a discrepancy may smell like a bug, but it's actually by design. Your Sitemap report only reflects the URLs you've submitted in your Sitemap file. The site operator, on the other hand, takes into account whatever Google has crawled, which may include URLs not included in your Sitemap, such as newly added URLs or other URLs discovered via links.

Think of the site operator as a quick diagnosis of the general health of your site in Google's index. Site operator results can show you:

a rough estimate of how many pages have been indexed
one indication of if your site has been hacked
if you have duplicate titles or snippets

Here is an example query using the site operator:

Your Sitemap report provides more granular statistics about the URLs you submitted, such as the number of indexed URLs vs. the number submitted for crawling, and Sitemap-specific warnings or errors that may have occurred when Google tried to access your URLs.

Feel free to check out our Help Center for more on the site: operator and Sitemaps. If you have further questions or issues, please post to our Webmaster Help Forum, where experienced webmasters and Googlers are happy to help.

Posted by Charlene Perez, Search Quality Team

Webmaster Central Blog