The current sitemap, based on the blog posts feed, is being replaced by an automatically generated, dedicated sitemap. You can see one, for this blog, as an example.
Accompanying the new sitemap will be an updated "robots.txt" file.
The new sitemap is not being setup, immediately, on all blogs. Only blogs with standard "robots.txt" file will get the sitemap, initially. It's being installed, automatically, with no action required by the blog owner, on a limited number of blogs.
I've seen a handful of blog owners report seeing the new sitemap being installed, on their blogs.
The sitemap will include 3 data elements / post.
- Post Title.
- Post URL
- Published date / time (UTC).
With these data elements now available without requiring searching through the post content in the newsfeed, any process which indexes or searches, using any of these data elements, will be much simpler - and be more stable, when run.
My suspicion is that several Blogger / Google features, no longer immediately requiring the blog feed in indexing, will be much more usable. Blogs which use dynamic templates, the Reading List, and search engine indexing, will eventually benefit.
Accompanying the new sitemap, which will index posts, will be a sitemap for static pages. You can see a pages sitemap, for this blog, as an example.
The pages sitemap appears to have 2 data elements / static page.
- Page URL
- Published date / time (UTC).
Check the "robots.txt" file on your blog. When the sitemap is installed on your blog, you will see the change.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept, you may read my other posts in this blog - or the Webmaster Tools Help: Learn about sitemaps. Now, we can do other things with the blog feed, without impeding indexing. Possibly, even private blogs can now be indexed.
The sitemap will provide a maximum of 2,500 entries - 5 pages of 500 entries, each page. As new posts are published to the blog, they will be added, automatically. Hopefully, not too many blogs will have 2,500 posts published, before the blog is indexed.
Since the announcement was made, I have added maybe a dozen posts to this blog. I just looked at Page 1 of the sitemap for this blog, and this post is now, there - 5 minutes after this post was published. You may, or may not, see the same update promptness on your blog.
0 comments:
Post a Comment