Google Sitemaps - What they are and how Google uses them

I recently read a post by the moderator of an Adsense-related forum where he made the statement that \"Google Sitemaps are totally useless\". I have to say that I was quite surprised, since I know the opposite to be true.

I think the reason for statements like this is that some people think that by creating Google Sitemap for their site, that it will increase their page rank and/or search results ranking.

While the correct use of Google Sitemaps can result in both of these things being true, it\'s not the creation of these Sitemaps that brings about these results (at least not directly).

What needs to be understood here is that the purpose of Google Sitemaps is NOT to increase your page rank or ranking in search results, but rather to help you analyze your site to make it more Google-friendly.\r Submitting a Google Sitemap for your site may also help your site get indexed more quickly.

The usefulness of Google Sitemaps comes from the stats and analysis of your site. Using this information, you can definitely increase the quality of your site, which should increase your page rank and/or search results rankings.

The first thing you get from a Google Sitemap Report is a list of errors that Google found on your site. Links that couldn\'t be followed or that timed out, HTTP errors, and robots.txt analysis. Errors could prevent Google from indexing some of your pages.

Next, you get a crawl analysis. This shows which of your pages had the highest page rank over the last three weeks.

In the Page Analysis section, you can get a list of the common keywords both in your site\'s content, and in incoming links to your site. Unfortunately, this is currently limited to single words, not phrases. But the info is still useful.

The most interesting and most useful stats that you get from using Google Sitemaps are the query stats. You can see which searches (in the past three weeks) returned pages from your site and what the highest average position was. The \"top search query clicks\" list shows which queries resulted in click-throughs to your site. The \"top search queries\" list shows which search queries returned your pages in the results which didnt result in click-throughs.

But you need to do more than simply create the Google Sitemap file and place it on your site. Google won\'t use it unless you submit your site at their Sitemaps page. And you also have to check the reports and make changes to your site based on those reports.

All of this information can be used to improve your site, and as a result, get better rankings and more click-throughs.

So the statement that Google Sitemaps are useless is only true if you create the file and then do nothing else with it. If you take the time to analyze the statistics that Google gives you, and use them to improve the quality of your site, the end result will be more visitors, and hopefully, more clicks on your Adsense ads, Affiliate links, or other promotions.

Nick Bulka is an internet marketer who publishes a weekly newsletter about Home Based Businesses. You can subscribe at http://www.HomeBizResources.com or read his blog at http://www.bulka.com.

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