site maps - does Googlebot recognize them as such?

What is the best url/link text for a site map?

[HarryM]

Does Googlebot recognize a site map as such or does it see it merely as another page with a lot of links on it? Do the words "site map" or "sitemap" in the link text or the url of a site map page mean anything to Googlebot? Is there something specific the bot looks for?

The reason for the question is I have three site maps with urls crawler1.php, crawler2.php, and crawler3.php, with the words "site map" included in the link texts from the index page. These are only infrequently visited by Google. Is there something specific I should change them to?

My apologies if this has been covered before, but a search did not turn up anything on this question.

Harry

[gefilte]

Houston we have a problem. All inbound links go to widgets.com, not default.html or index.html. If you click from my index.html page to the homepage you get default.html, which is the same as just plain widgets.com. So I have two homepages somehow. If I get rid of one, will all inbound links still find it if it's default.html? plain old widgets.com has pagerank, default.html has none.

On the topic, my index.html has the same pagerank as the homepage but is not indexed. Will changing the homepage to default or index and the index to sitemap change this?

[steveb]

If it's not indexed it doesn't have pagerank. Bottom line, change your current index.html to sitemap.html (or whatever) and eveything will be fine in a month or so.

[HarryM]

All inbound links go to widgets.com, not default.html or index.html.

This is normal - the server picks the "default" page for the site and serves it to the user. In your case it appears to be default.html. This page must exist or no one could access the site.

If you click from my index.html page to the homepage you get default.html, which is the same as just plain widgets.com.

Currently you have only checked from inside your site, which is relying on what you have actually coded. Why not do as I recommended. Try accessing the site as a user would and see what page you get. You can also check Googles cache for widgets.com/ and see if the same page is there.

So I have two homepages somehow. If I get rid of one, will all inbound links still find it if it's default.html? plain old widgets.com has pagerank, default.html has none

If your "default" page is default.html, then default.html gets the pagerank, not widgets.com. Only pages can have pagerank and widgets.com is not a page. But before you get rid of one, check as above which users and Google are actually seeng.

[added later] How do you know all your inbound links go only to widgets.com/ and not to a specific page? [/later]

Harry

[gefilte]

I appreciate all your advice. As you can see, I'm quite the amateur. I know all inbound links go to widgets.com because I checked several pages that link to me, you get widgets.com, not default.html. I assume that's why widgets.com has pagerank and not default.html. I checked that with the toolbar. That's how I know index.html has pagerank too. But index.html does not show up on a search of google, only widgets.com and a few other pages from the site with inbound links from outside pages.

[HarryM]

I know all inbound links go to widgets.com because I checked several pages that link to me, you get widgets.com, not default.html.

You are missing the point. There is no such page as widgets.com, but there is a page associated with it. It doesn't matter that the links to your site only have "www.widgets.com" in the URL, your server will supply a page.

You need to know what this page is. To do this type "www.widgets.com" in your browser address field, click GO (or whatever), and see what page is displayed on your screen. That is the page supplied by the server. Compare it with the pages that you know of to determine its name.

Then do a search on Google for "www.index.com". Click where it says 'Find web pages that contain the term "www.widgets.com"' Then click where it says "repeat the search with the omitted results included" This lists all your pages that are indexed in Google.

Somewhere in the list you should find a line with an URL of "www.widgets.com/". Click on "cached". This is a copy of your home page that Google has indexed, and is the page that has the PR.

Harry

[nakulgoyal]

After reading all, I feel that if we comeback and read [google.com...] and see [google.com...] all questions are answered!

What do you all say?