Pleasanton Web Design

I logged onto my 1&1 Internet Control Panel last week and noticed a new category: Marketing Center. One of the items in that category was “Google Webmaster Tools.” “Excellent,” I thought to myself.

The 1&1 Internet Google Webmaster Tools feature consists of an automated script that generates a file called google_sitemap.xml.gz, which is a compressed xml sitemap file, for the selected domain. It also submits it to Google for you.

The sitemap creation dialog gives you the following options to customize your sitemap file:
-Directory Selection
-File Category Selection
-Excluded Files

Once submitted you can update your sitemap once a day, and it will be resubmitted through the control panel. That’s about it.

This is a really stripped down version of Google Webmaster Tools. If you are just starting out, and want to get sitemaps up quick and easily, 1 &1′s Google Webmaster Tools feature could be the way to go for you. If you want more control over your sitemap and more detailed information on your sites performance and Google’s indexing of it, I’d recommend opening up a Google Account, and downloading GSiteCrawler sitemap generator.

Already have a Google Sitemap? Why not submit it to Yahoo too? First you’ll need to set up a Yahoo account and authenticate your site, much like you would on Google. Set up your site here:

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ (see my post on Yahoo Site Explorer)

Once your site has been added, they accept sitemap submissions here:

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

Once logged in, here’s what you’ll see:

Whereas Google asks you to enter your sitemap, but you can also enter your site feed, Yahoo asks you to enter your site feed, but you can also enter your sitemap. They just have to be different. Individual. Unique.

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Once your sitemap is entered (or site feed, for you bloggers), you’ll be taken to your feed page, which looks very similar to the sitemaps page in Google Webmaster tools:

Like Google Sitemaps, it allows you to resubmit at will, and shows you when you last submitted, and when it was last uploaded:

I’ve heard talk the MSN will also accept sitemap submission in the near future. I’m waiting.

Ok, I panicked. The GSiteCrawler Website is back up, and my download completion dialog just interrupted my typing. They may have been updating the Website, because there seems to be a lot more info on it than the last time I was there. All good.

I just tried to fire up my GSiteCrawler program to update one of my Google Sitemaps and was informed via dialog box that my copy is only good until today, and I should go to http://johannesmueller.com/gs to download the current version. That URL redirects to http://gsitecrawler.com, which is now an empty page.

GSiteCrawler was an excellent, easy to use tool, and now it is gone. Whatever will I do. I guess it’s back to the Google Python program for now.