Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Noticeably, the interface is a little different. Sitemaps are now listed as "See stats for: yourdomain.com" Clicking this link shows several new stats (used to only show the crawl stats)
Now you are presented with this:
Query stats ¦ Crawl stats ¦ Page analysis ¦ Index stats
Here are the descriptions:
Query Stats:
Top search queries are the top queries to Google that return pages from your site. Top search query clicks are the top queries to Google that directed traffic to your site (based on the number of clicks to your pages in our search results).
Crawl Stats:
These statistics provide distribution information for pages we have crawled. [This page also shows page rank distribution across all pages crawled.]
Page Analysis:
These statistics show you how the Googlebot sees your site.
Index Stats:
You can use our Advanced Search page to find out how your site is indexed. Below, we've done some of these searches for you. [Just quick links to site:domain.com, etc.]
I like the information being provided on query stats the most, it's only a little glimpse, but lets you know what keyword you are showing up most for.
There is also a new "Errors" tab that has the following info:
HTTP errors ¦ Unreachable URLs ¦ URLs restricted by robots.txt ¦ URLs not followed ¦ URLs timed out
In order to use any of the advanced statistics, you must verify your domain. Information on stats and verifying can be found here [google.com]
Sounds like a lure to attract more people to using sitemaps?
I wouldn't say so.
Looks to me like they're trying to get more people not to use sitemaps.
You see Google made an important discovery: people are like sheep!
Give them bread and circus and they'll provide free feedback, free sitemaps to ease their job, free content to fill their engine.
What the heck, people will even provide their credit card numbers on adwords, or, better still, their full personal profile and relationships on Orkut!
Isn't this awesome! Let's join this now and make Google's life even easier! Alright!
... because it tells google who owns what domain (better than WHOIS data ever could) and therefore who is cross-linking all their sites, so that they can take this into account when assigning values to links...
Nah...Google wouldn't do that. They're our buddies!
I have found that it is more efficient when crawling my site, things that I defined as having a change frequency of 'always' seem to receive a lot more hits from googlebot, the ones I defined as monthly have almost no hits. Also it never indexed my Forum boards before and it nows seems to be no problem. I hate to say this is all because of my G sitemap submission but that seems opimistic for one tool. It is likely that an agorythom has changed, but I have seen increased traffic to my site which is a very niche site. I would say for sure though that the saving on bandwidth
(if you have enough sites this would be reason enough to use it). It seems to respect the frequecy tag and the last modified tag and indexes your site accordingly.
Also my firend's new site was totally sandboxed, new URL, no sites pointing to it. I suggested Google sitemaps and he has recieved about 500 googlebot hits mentioned in his logs this month so it seems to make a difference.
Another thing, does anyone notice that some of the new data that they giving in G sitemaps is more related to the new Urchin thingy, Google Analytics then Sitemap? Just wondering if this is a prelude to to them saying, Want more data? Sign up here for Google Analytics.
Of course they are going to use this information for the greater good, and if you are stupid enough to sitemap all of your Splogs with the same google account then you deserve what you get.
'Google is the new Big Brother' says the tinfoil hat wearing nerd as he peeks out from his moms basement... No sh*t! Get used to it and act accordingly, Google provides GREAT traffic for free, GREAT email and many many other great services FREE! AND is actually reaching out to the webmasters! If you are a light grey hat or better then you have nothing to fear. If you live an honest life and have nothing to hide, fear not.
Otherwise, cover your tracks!
I think Google deserve's an award for this one (even though it is broken and the Query stats repeat phrases, but i sure they are 'working' on it)
DaveN
When Google Site maps announced themselves I thought that is a lot of extra work and serves only Google. What about all the other search engines? They produce 40% of our search engine traffic or about 15% of our overall traffic.
I would like to hear some comments about the pros and cons, before I tackle the project to put Google Site maps on the site. Any help out there?
Have a happy day
Jörn
Low: PR 1-4
Medium: PR 5-7
High: PR 8-10
Which doesn't seem the most useful division for most people.
I think they should redo that to a bit less ambitious and more realistic levels.
Who knows it now might encourage more Pageranked buying of links? :)
Having more "query stats" would also help, as would not showing duplicates. Certainly if the site has rather high traffic on many different pages.
