robots.txt verses sitemap.html verses OPML file

[Neal]

I've read, heard, seen all kinds of information, eaching claiming you need one or more of these files.

My question is which work, which don't, why use one over another?

Also with a SiteMap does it need to be named sitemap.html or can it be named something else?

I created a sitemap for our website http://www.example.com/sitemap.html
Do you think this is to busy? to many links?

Should I also create a robots.txt, and OPML file?

[edited by: ThomasB at 7:56 pm (utc) on July 11, 2005]

[Dijkgraaf]

It depends what you are trying to achieve.
robots.txt is to stop compliant bots requesting certain URL's
META tags can be used to stop certain pages being indexed, cached or links being followed by compliant bots.
A site map gives a bots a quick way to spider all your site. You also have googles site map (Beta) to add to the mix.
I had not come accross OPML before you mentioned it, but that looks like a fairly new XML document specification for summarising online contents. Could become usefull depending on the uptake of this standard.

With all of the above standards there are varying degrees of compliance by various search engines, so probably a mix of some of the above would have the best results, depending on the search engine.