Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Remember the first days of Yahoo when using a highly positioned sitemap was effective for good results and spidering?
I am noticing the same phenomenon in Google. Instead of placing 100's of links on the index to get (and keep) 3rd and 4th level pages indexed, I am instead, creating one very important sitemap, linked high in page code from every page, with the most important links (content pages and pages I wish to rank) listed high in code on that page as well. This can be done using div if one wishes to not place priority on the sitemap from a visitor persepctive.
On the sitemap I do not include any images, just a simple title and I use <li> with each link. Page design is kept to a minimum.
I have also pointed 5-10 links at it just to be sure, and have found I have lost very few, if any pages in Google over the last 2 months. Pages I do not care about placing priority on are listed on a sub-sitemap linked to last from the main sitemap.
What I have noticed is that this causes my sitemap, for each site I own, to be placed in the top 5 in a site: search for that site. If the importance of the page is increased, the importance of the links on that page increase as well, which leads to further spidering. Call it increased pr, call it what you will, but it is working for me for 5 sites.
Hope that helps
