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We post a lot of new text content, usually, every day, and my hope is for it to get indexed ASAP because it's often "breaking" developments. Because of the nature of the sites that I design, timeliness is everything. If we issue a statement, we need to get as much attention as possible, right away.
And I still can't make any sense out of the "freshness" dates.;) I guess Googleguy has said that basically, they run them sporadically, but don't have any set pattern... yet.
[edited by: politicsandlabor at 10:12 pm (utc) on Nov. 1, 2002]
As far as I know, site maps can *definitely* help a site, for ease of use, navigation, etc...it's sort of like offering a site search feature (like the WebmasterWorld site search [searchengineworld.com]) only offers a different angle on it, for people that would prefer to browse (like a directory) instead of type in what they want (like a search engine).
For the 'fresh stuff' I'm sure that linking to it from your sites site map, also the index page, will help...especially if your site is updated frequently. You may consider putting the new stuff in it's on directory, and label it 'news'. :)
Thanks for your input. To tell ya the truth, I really don't see this as being much help for surfers. I desire having the spider fondle all of our pages...;)
I just want to entice her Googleness to probe as deeply as possible.
Whew, gotta start getting more R and R.
The information Jeremy gave you is right on the money. I just wanted to add that a site map is also useful for folks using older browsers and text only browsers.
I will sometimes jump straight to a site map, so I can navagate through a website with ease.
A site map is a great addition to offer your users and SE bots.
- Chad
For example - if you had a website with 50 states (on seperate pages) - all linked to from the home page - and then cities under those pages - it wouldn't really help the users to have a site map.
Other sites have pages that don't seem to fit in any one category. I use google's site map - for example - as well as other site maps - due to their pages not being easily classified.
It can help SEs find your pages, but if you have any decent structure to them - they should be able to find it anyway. I think this was more useful in the past - than it is now.
In short - if you think it will help your users - I would add it. If not - I probably wouldn't bother, but I doubt it would hurt.
