Question about XML Sitemaps

How to start if don't know much about building Sitemaps?

[Erku]

Hello,

We need to have sitemap. our site run the latest version of Drupal, and their XML Gsitemap has a problem now, it will take some time to build it.

But I was online and see some sites offer a box where you put your URL and it creates a sitemap. Basically they take care of the bandwidth too.

1. Are They Safe?

2. I also saw some sites that allow you to download a sitemap software on your computer and run from your computer anytime you make a change on your site.

Are these good options?

Could anyone please recommend an easy but reliable way to go?

Thank you.

[londrum]

seems like a bit of a waste of time if all you are doing is entering your homepage url -- presumably it justs spiders your site as best it can. but that is exactly what a search engine would do. it's not going to find any pages that googlebot wouldn't.

[AussieWebmaster]

Go to Google Sitemaps and they give you a download to create the sitemap... then using a Gmail account set up a Google account and go through the instructions for sitemap submission - basically you create the url - and then put a verification code on your homepage

[Erku]

Hi AussieWebmaster,

would you please show me the link the the download place? I would greatly appreciate it. You can either paste here if that's ok, or to sticky me.

Thank you.

[phranque]

here is the link to the goog sitemap generator help page [google.com] and you may also want to browse the google sitemaps faq [google.com].

[Erku]

Thank you so much.

I had a friend help me with the sitemap, but it does not update, I resubmitted it again, and it has been 7-8 hours that it's still pending. Also, it's not showing the new links that I create in the site.
Is it not supposed to refresh?

I would greatly appreciate your help.

[Corey Bryant]

I have noticed that XML sitemaps on Google will refresh every few days if the content is not static. XML sitemaps on my blogs usually refresh every few hours.

If this is the first time you submitted your XML sitemap, it might take 24 hours to get it into the database. GSitecrawler does a great job at creating one

-Corey