Understanding the structure of XML Google SiteMaps

Google Sitemaps is a system introduced in 2005 by the Mountain View giant in order to report to his spider the pages of a site and, to refute those who firmly believe this system is not conducive to indexing content, because it was merely a tool signaling.

In this article, by-pass the theoretical explanations and Marketing and will focus on the XML structure in which this system is physically prepared.

The XML file should preferably be placed in the root of a site and the file name is not important. Suppose to be sitemaps.xml.

Let's examine its basic structure:

 <? Xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>







 <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">



    



 <url>



        



 <loc> / </ loc>



        



 <lastmod> 15/09/2006 </ lastmod>



        



 <changefreq> weekly </ changefreq>



        



 <priority> 1.0 </ priority>



    



 </ Url>







 </ Urlset>

The first line we find the statement and the version of XML and its UTF.

Then there is the parent tag is urlset with its closure at the end of the file, its namespace, specified by the xmlns tag, refers to the remote location of Google itself, which is related to the DTD spaces in the names used and managed the same Big G.

At this point, we examine the node consists of the main url and the tags from the list of useful tags to specify the values ​​for single page.

Loc - Specifies the page to be reported to the Google spider, in which case the homepage.

lastmod - Indicates the last modification date in the format of the page:

 



 yyyy-mm-dd

 

or

 



 year-month-day

 

changefreq - Indicates how often a page is updated:

• daily - every day
• weekly - weekly
• monthly - monthly

Priority - Indicates the level of importance of the page: you can say to Google, so that its importance goes from 0.1 to 1.0 and no further.

Now let's try to expand the Google SiteMaps XML file constituent, indicating also the page of the Forum Mr. Webmaster, in addition to the already specified Homepage:

 <? Xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>







 <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">



    



 <url>



        



 <loc> / </ loc>



        



 <lastmod> 15/09/2006 </ lastmod>



        



 <changefreq> weekly </ changefreq>



        



 <priority> 1.0 </ priority>



    



 </ Url>

 

     



 <url>

 

         



 <loc> http://forum.centre-equestre-lepuy.com/ </ loc>

 

         



 <lastmod> 15/09/2006 </ lastmod>

 

         



 <changefreq> daily </ changefreq>

 

         



 <priority> 1.0 </ priority>

 

     



 </ Url>







 </ Urlset>

The amendment (addition) is highlighted in bold.

It is advisable to automate the update mechanism of the XML file in question through any software or webware, self-created, via the server-side scripting language you prefer.