Does siteindex.xml determine sitelinks?

[andrewg 1976]

I have a website with over 150 pages. I want Google to build the menu/table of contents with my top eight pages when you search for my website. For example if you google "[keyword]" in the result you will see 8 pages in the menu for one website. Is it the siteindex.xml that determines this menu?

Also if I only include my top eight pages ranked in my siteindex.xml will Google still index all of my other pages?

[edited by: tedster at 3:22 pm (utc) on Feb. 3, 2010]
[edit reason] mke keywords generic [/edit]

[TheMadScientist]

An XML sitemap has nothing to do with the site links in the results. From what I've read they're usually from bread crumbs and/or named anchor links... Yes, Google will index your site with or without an XML sitemap, and there's really no need to put only 8 pages in there if you're going to make one.

[andrewg 1976]

Edit to original post:

For example if you google "america bank" you will see 8 page links in the menu for the 1st result (Sign In, Locations etc). Is it the siteindex.xml that determines this menu?

[andrewg 1976]

Thanks TheMadScientist. You got in 1min before I posted my update.

So by the sounds of it, a siteindex is useless to my site if all the pages have been indexed by google.

I'd like to know how the site links in the results are built though.

[tedster]

Google has an evolving algorithm to decide about sitelinks - whether it's the full 8-link treatment, or a shorter set of sitelinks presentedd in one line. It used to be based very strongly on a site's navigation and architecture, but more and more it seems to be based on traffic.

[andrewg 1976]

Is this a fair conclusion?

"So by the sounds of it, a siteindex is useless to my site if all the pages have been indexed by google."

[tedster]

If you mean a sitemap, no it's not useless. You can include the fields that tell Google how frequently you update the pages, for example. Also, new URLs may be crawled and indexed sooner if they are place in a newly revised sitemap that pings Google.

However, it can also be useful NOT to have an xml sitemap, at least for sites that are not really major in size. Without a sitemap, if there are URL discovery problems (orphaned pages for instance), then that fact will not be hidden from the webmaster by URL discovery that happens only because of the sitemap,

[franky123]

Google index all pages of a website without sitemap as well, if there is no error in page loads. But if you want to give more preference to only 8 pages then can include is sitemap. It will help to promote them.

Thanks
Franky