OddThinking

Google have just introduced an interesting new concept – Google Sitemaps.

What is a Google Sitemap?

The idea is to provide Google with a “site map” – an XML-formatted list of all of the pages on your site that you would like Google to crawl. It is a set of hints to Google, or other compliant search engine about where best to look, how often to look and which pages you consider the most important.

In a way, it is the direct opposite of a robots.txt file. It tells the search-engine where to look rather than where to avoid.

Good or Evil?

On the negative side, Google Sitemaps is yet another set of standards for a web-master to learn and adopt. The value is also unclear – supplying a site-map assists the Google team, but it is not clear that it assists the web-master.

On the positive side, it will probably end up automatically generated by your web-server or content-manager. You still need to submit the URL of your sitemap to Google (and you have to register with Google to do so), but if you want Google to get your pages faster, you will be motivated to so this anyway.

Where to next?

So will this concept catch on? I wouldn’t like to judge. Google has enough zeitgeist points to get people to follow their suggestions, and enough marketshare in the search-engine space that people will go to great lengths to please the Google Crawler God. However, I think there will need to be a noticeable payoff to the early adopters for others to follow, and I am not sure it will be that clear. If you do absolutely nothing, Google will probably get your web-site mostly right anyway.

If this concept does catch on, it will be interesting to see how it leads outside of the immediate search-engine applications.

It is a small step to image a Google search that will take a URL, and supply the nearest site-map. It isn’t a giant leap from there to imagine a browser plug-in that monitors where you are visiting, and fetches some behind-the-scenes info. Maybe it could use it to draw a personal site-map tree for hard-to-navigate sites. Maybe it could use it to pre-grab pages for a local cache before you visit it, limiting itself to only those pages where a cache might make sense.

The Race To Plugin

As soon as I saw the announcement, I heard a starter’s pistol go off in my mind. Dozens of people around the world are rushing to produce plugins for content management systems, like WordPress, to automatically produce Google Sitemaps. I briefly considered joining the WordPress plugin race myself, before realising I had enough projects on my plate at the moment. I would probably be beaten to the punch by some more experienced WordPress developer.

There will be significant spoils to the winner of this race. That is, if thousands of new visitors to their web-pages could be considered “spoils”.

A Terrible Thought

I am sure the Google searches by people searching for a WordPress plug-in have already started. Until someone produces the goods, hundreds of people every day are seeing the text:

Your search – +WordPress “Google Sitemap” +plugin – did not match any documents.

Thinking some more about this phenomenon, a terrible idea occurred to me – one that I would almost consider beneath me… almost, but not quite! 😉

I hope this post was interesting enough, and on topic enough, for some of my newest visitors to check out some of the rest of my blog while they are here.