3-Part Harmony: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft

On Wednesday, I received three blog posts from the "big three" search engine companies ... and all with a similar message. One from the Google blog, one from the Yahoo blog, and one from Live Search.

Web developers have long agreed that standards are both necessary and beneficial, and it seems the big three search engines agree with this notion. They have agreed upon a standard protocol for sitemaps.

Now, I'm talking about the sitemap you create for your visitors to help them find their way. I'm talking about the XML file you create to help search engines find all your pages.

This is from Yahoo:

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.

Sitemaps are especially important if you have a large site, a site with lots of directories / sub-directories, or a combination of the two.

-Austin SEO Guy