November 15, 2006

Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft join forces (really !!) behind Sitemaps

The best part about to-do lists is when you get to cross something off, and today we can cross one more from the list of feedback we have collected from webmasters. You have asked us to support a single format for submission and today we want to talk about how we are teaming up with Google and Microsoft to support Sitemaps 0.90.

Together we’re announcing www.sitemaps.org, which provides details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates as we continue to collaborate on this common protocol. By offering an open standard for web sites, webmasters can use a single format to create a catalog of their site URLs and to notify changes to the major search engines. This should make is easier for web sites to provide search engines with content and metadata. And in turn, search engines can spend less time crawling unchanged pages and can update indexes faster as new content is discovered. This will help us reflect the changes more quickly, and improve our ability to provide more timely and relevant search results for users. Sitemaps is available to any site owner who wishes to communicate more easily with participating search engines. Simply create and upload an XML Sitemap and submit the URL of the file to search engines.

You can submit Sitemaps to Yahoo! Search through Site Explorer, just like you could add RSS feeds up to now. Just add the site to which the feed belongs, to your list of sites, and then add the feed for that site. We will retrieve the sitemap and use the data you provide us.

We are open to feedback and ideas on what more we can do with Site Explorer and Sitemaps. Share your thoughts in our forum, we?d love to hear from you.

Thanks and keep the list growing,

Priyank Garg
Product Manager, Yahoo! Search

Comments

  1. Woohoo!! Great going, Yahoo! Now THAT deserves a big party!!

  2. Great that you guys are working together now!

  3. Great going, team!! (Proud ex-search team member.. :-) )

  4. Hello!
    Well, that’s a nice thing ! I’m happy about that, everyone respecting standards :)

    Splitsch

  5. I wonder if there is a discovery mechanism from the web pages to the sitemap. I think along the lines of Although this one schema is already taken by Mozilla for an RDF sitemap. But well could be working for different mime-types.

    Also, what is the /ping?sitemap=… URL? sitemap.org names this handy ping mechanism but all three parties are silent on what their URL is.

    K

  6. P.S.: Your comment script is broken! It does eat <o>

    This indicates it could be vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting. Sorry for the Meta-Off-Topic remark.

    K<o>

  7. Curious if you going to release an API for posting the sitemap?

    I use Googl’e sitemap generation tool, which enerates a fresh sitemap every day and then uploads it to google via an API. I’d love to see Yahoo! add an API that I could add to Google’s sitemap generation tool and automate the whole process.

    Thanks for working together on this, BTW. Most excellent.

  8. That’s cool dudes.

    Took notice of this thing and really excited about the outcomes.

    Best Wishes.

  9. Cool, finally I won’t have to create multiple sitemap versions. This is how the world should be. Have a standard and follow it!

  10. This is great! Saves a lot of webmasters and search engines….

  11. Sitebases, the next protocol after Sitemap
    It can save the time and press for the search engine, also for the websites.
    It can bring new search engine that named Search Engine 2.0 .
    Using Sitebases protocol, will save 95% bandwidth above. It is another sample for long tail theory.
    In this protocol, I suggested that all search engine can share their Big Sitebases each other, so the webmaster just need to submit their Sitebases to one Search Engine.
    And I suggested that all search engines can open their search API for free and unlimited using.

    Please visit: http://www.sitebases.org

  12. That was great seeing all you guys up there at Pubcon behind one common field. It is great that you guys are all competing but decided to put away your differences and built a sitemap standard. It’s nice being able to make sitemaps for one and applying them to all.

  13. Whoa, now before I can use this, I just need to find a user-friendly FAQ about “site-feeds.”

  14. The only information on sitemaps.org about pinging is only for Google. Shame that Yahoo you will need an account, which isn’t needed for Google on pinging.

    For Yahoo you need to create an api-key, and after pinging it doesn’t update. Created a few new pages the last 3 days, and my sitemap been processed with Yahoo 3 days ago, while I pinged a few times last few days.

    Need to log in at site explorer, and resubmit the sitemap.

    To bad we need an account everywhere. There are so many search engines around, and if all search engine needs an account to get there sitemap processed (if other will follow to adapt the protocol that is), i rather would see a new meta-tag or a link rel=”sitemap” for in the head of a website.

    - RaZ

  15. wonderful to see everybody getting along for the sake of one perpose. one size fits all ha! I love it.

  16. it is very clear already that Google is monopolist, and one day may be no far away Google like Microsoft will be in many Jokes with your services.

    But Yahoo and MSN will try to back on the top, this will be interesting if it is not very late.

    Regards
    Dimi
    http://www.bgpages.com

  17. How long can Yahoo collect my site after I submited the sitemap?
    One day? One week?

  18. This is great! Saves a lot of webmasters and search engines.

  19. This indicates it could be vulnerable to Cross Site Scripting. Sorry for the Meta-Off-Topic remark.

  20. Took notice of this thing and really excited about the outcomes.

    Best Wishes.

  21. it looks really useful bt I couldnt find the components, do you have any idea?

  22. Great that you guys are working together now!

  23. This is great! Saves a lot of webmasters and search engines.

  24. Thanks Yahoo!

  25. thanks .

  26. Nice info

  27. Fantastic

    Took notice of this thing and really excited about the outcomes.

    Best Wishes.

  28. I liked it …

  29. thanks everbody.

  30. Good post thanks you all.

  31. This Information is great.
    Using Sitebases protocol, will save 95% bandwidth above. It is another sample for long tail theory.
    I use Googl’e sitemap generation tool, which enerates a fresh sitemap every day and then uploads it to google via an API.

  32. thanks everbody.

  33. it is very clear already that Google is monopolist, and one day may be no far away Google like Microsoft will be in many Jokes with your services.

  34. Took notice of this thing and really excited about the outcomes.

  35. This is great! Saves a lot of webmasters and search engines.

  36. Took notice of this thing and really excited about the outcomes.

  37. Well, that’s a nice thing ! I’m happy about that, everyone respecting standards :)

  38. Hi thank you very much :)