Include pdf documents in sitemap?

Should pdf documents be inlcuded in your sitemap?

[ngreve]

I have an electronics retail site with approximately 3000 skus. The questions I have is about my sitemap that I output. Should I include the pdf spec sheets for each product in my sitemap? If so, should they be set to be crawled or not? I use Gsite Crawler to produce my sitemaps and one of the options when producing the sitemap is to check the URL to be Included, and Crawled. I am looking for clarification on what is the best practice considering pdf documents in sitemaps. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
ngreve

[pageoneresults]

ngreve, Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

I am looking for clarification on what is the best practice considering pdf documents in sitemaps. Any help would be appreciated.

Sitemaps are generally your "Table of Contents" for the site. Normally a TOC would include everything that is available to the reader. In this case, you have pdf spec sheets which if optimized properly give you a little more advantage.

Yes, include your pdfs in the Sitemap. You may want to consider setting up multiple sitemaps and organizing them so that the visitor is best served when visiting them.

Also be sure to provide a visual clue for the visitor that the links lead to a pdf document.

Quick note on optimizing your pdfs, use Adobe Acrobat and be sure to fill in all the blanks in the...

File > Document Properties > Description
File > Document Properties > Initial View

When linking to the pdf documents, use the same title that you have in the Description area. :)

[Shaddows]

Further to P1R, I would have the PDF links look like this
[url=http://www.example.com/doctitle.pdf]Document Title (PDF)[/url]

*mods, I cant make that work :(

or in html
<a href=http://www.example.com/doctitle.pdf>Document Title [PDF]</a>

Its really annoying clicking on a link that launches a PDF unexpectedly

[edited by: Shaddows at 3:44 pm (utc) on Dec. 9, 2008]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], ngreve!
thanks for delurking.

are you asking specifically about sitemap.xml or about the html sitemap provided in your site navigation?

[ngreve]

phranque,

I am asking specifically about sitemap.xml. Sorry, I should have clarified. If you have any suggestions please do so. What I am attempting to do is refine my sitmap.xml file to include only the most important links on my site by order of priority and relevance to get the most from search engine crawlers.

[phranque]

i think that is what the priority tag is for:
[sitemaps.org...]