Sitemaps for large (1 mil+) websites?

[DiscoStu]

I've hard that if your website is large enough you need to use several sitemaps...anyone know anything about this?

[Demaestro]

I have seen them categorized.

You click sitemap and you are presented with a list of categories...... example

Sales
Media Releases
Corporate Info
Franchises

Then clicking a category heading gives you a sitemap for that category, or even more sub categories.

It is more about ease of use then what is "the right way"

[JonW]

If your talking about sitemap protocol, use a sitemap index file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
<lastmod>2004-10-01T18:23:17+00:00</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

[DiscoStu]

So you mean create an xml sitemap that points to the sub sitemaps?

[JonW]

Well the specification isn't identical, but that's the idea.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Don't have more than 50K URL's in one sitemap, if you can creating it for Google.

[maximillianos]

Yup, 50k is the limit for G. We use multiple sitemaps to accommodate this restriction.

[jkovar]

Start here
[google.com...]