New Google Update on Sitemaps

Over the last year, submission of Sitemaps by website hosts has almost tripled. One of the recent studies indicate that sitemaps help search engines to find any new or changed content faster. Although, it doesn't guarantee that your website will be crawled and indexed, but it surely helps in understanding your site better.

Here are some of the latest information about Sitemaps:

• Search engines that are part of the Sitemaps.org now supports up to 50,000 child Sitemaps for Sitemap index files. As a result, large sites can now submit a theoretical maximum of 2.5 billion URLs with a single Sitemap Index URL.
• Users can now view all Sitemap files that were submitted for verification in Webmaster Tools. This information is useful for owners of multiple sites who have verified sites or submitting some Sitemap files through HTTP ping/ robot.txt file.
• Now, more precise indexed URL count for your Sitemap files.
• To allow Sitemap extensions, Google has updated the XSD schemas. The new schema will help XML developers to create better Sitemaps by verifying more features. This will allow you to be more confident that the Sitemap files are correct.
• Sitemap files are much faster, since Google has drastically reduced the average time for submitting a Sitemap file to process and show some initial data in Webmaster Tools.

To know more about using Sitemaps, check out the FAQ on Sitemaps.

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