Google Sitemap

Involved Joined: Oct 09, 2004 Posts: 293

Great stuff...and answered in a manner that one can think the logic thru.

Quote:

One submitted does google still use other files and do they over ride the sitemap?

I meant, does google the over ride files like robots and stuff in google tap?
(your answer did answer another question I hadnt thoiught of lol)
I ask this cause I am sure I have something wrong thats stopping search engines(except msn) from getting past the front page and crawling forums.
I think I may need someone to have at look at this later.
As I said before we are already on the front page of all top search engines, and have been static for the last couple weeks in ranking, so it will be interesting if there is any movement...its very diffuct to move once in the top 10 ands even more in the top 5. If u wish I will keep u posted on any movements on the front page listings Or dramatic changes to search parameters on other pages eg kakariki +breeding
No movement so far in google.

back to Proity thing
With our site www.kakariki.net the bulk of new stuff and reference material is in forums..therefore those would be top prioity, in particular the 'sticky' threads right? or the forum index? with stickys being also prioritised?

I hope that these questions may help u to put together a good FAQ/help file also. The google explanations are a bit ambiguous

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:20 am

No, it doesn't override things in the robots.txt - also it doesn't override the robots-meta-tag. The program actually reads and uses the robots.txt (+ the robots-meta tags) so you should be able to tell if it's getting "stuck". I imagine that getting forums into the search engines is going to be hard (especially if you have little "content" on the forum URLs, i.e. small postings; I didn't check your site so I don't know if this is on your site as well). What will certainly help is a html sitemap file (perhaps generated from the program) linked from the main page (it could be just from a 1x1 pixel transparent GIF, i.e the users won't find it but the search engines will).

Regarding Priority - your idea is good - I'll have to try that. It would be interesting to automate, i.e. those URLs which aren't indexed have a higher priority.. Hmmm... Smile

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 1:54 am

What are the " the robots-meta tags" ?

We have a scrolling forums block on the front page, wouldnt that do the same as having a html sitemap.gif (dont know how to do that but understand the principle)

The postings with info are very big..The ave size of posts are larger than normalI think thats what u mean by content
i.e http://www.kakariki.net/ftopict-241.html
http://www.kakariki.net/ftopict-59.html

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 2:30 am

Here are some links to the robots tag + the Googlebot one (for good measure):
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/meta-user.html
http://www.google.com/remove.html

No, the scrolling forum blocks on the front page aren't a replacement for a sitemap.htm. They're done with javascript (usually), i.e. the search engines will ignore them. After crawling your site, use the function Generate / Export URL list to create a simple html sitemap file. You'll see the difference Smile