Google Sitemaps for WordPress & Sitemaps XML
Michael Nguyen of Social Patterns has been quick to the draw in constructing a script for WordPress which constructs a php sitemap of a WordPress blog for inclusion into the new Google Sitemaps program. The code generates a Google Sitemaps friendly XML feed which lists newest posts first. Michael put up a link to his own Social Patterns Google Sitemaps page along with some copy and paste code for any WordPress user who wants to install a sitemap for the purpose of submittal to the new Google Sitemaps Program.
In addition to the Google Sitemaps WordPress “hack”, Michael has also put together an excellent outline of the Google Sitemaps Protocol. Here’s a snippet : The Google Sitemap Protocol allows you to tell Google what URLs on your web site is ready to be crawled. The Sitemap contains a list of URLs and some meta data about the URL such as when they were last modified, how frequently the content changes, and the priority of the page relative to other pages.
The Google Sitemap is in an XML format using some very simple XML tags. So if you know how to alter HTML files, you will be fine with Google Sitemaps. XML is a bit more strict than HTML, so you will need to remember to encode all your data values (fix those &’s!).
What does a Google Sitemap look like?
A Google Sitemap uses 6 XML tags:
* changefreq
* lastmod
* loc
* priority
* url
* urlset
To continue reading on about Google Sitemaps Protocol, feel free to to read Michael’s post “Breaking Down Google Sitemaps XML.” By the way, Michael Nguyen has entered the search engine blogging community with a storm of insight and information. He’s now a frequent contributor to Search Engine Journal and you’ll more than likely see him adding comments on SERoundtable and other blogs, as well as different forums. This guy knows what he’s talking about.
