Inside Google Sitemaps: October 2005

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When your site changes


Here's another question we've gotten. If you have a question about Sitemaps, let us know by posting in the Sitemaps Google Group.

I've submitted a Sitemap for my site. What should I do when my site changes?

If you add pages to your site, you can let us know in several different ways:
  • Resubmit your Sitemap: You can add the URLs to your existing Sitemap and then resubmit it either by using your Google Account or by sending us a ping (HTTP request).

  • Create a new Sitemap: You can create a new Sitemap with only the new URLs and submit that separately using your Google Account.

  • Use a Sitemap index file: You can create a new Sitemap with only the new URLs and then list both the original Sitemap and the new Sitemap in a Sitemap index file. Then, you can simply submit the Sitemap index file. If you often add pages to your site, you can periodically create a new Sitemap with new URLs, add the the new Sitemap to the Sitemap index file, and resubmit the Sitemap index file.
Note that if you ping us to let us know about changes to your Sitemap, make sure that you submit that Sitemap using your Google Account at least once. The Last Submitted date shown in your Google Sitemaps Account lists the date you last submitted the Sitemap manually, but if you receive a status OK (200) from the ping, we received it successfully.

If you've deleted pages from your site, you can delete those pages from your Sitemap and then resubmit it (either manually through your Google Account or by pinging us).

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Including site pages in a Sitemap


From time to time, we use this blog to answer some common questions. Here's one:

Do I have to include every URL from my site in my Sitemap? If I don't include some of them, will they be excluded from the Google index?

Your Sitemap provides us with an additional way to learn about your site. We still use all of our other methods, such as following links from your site's HTML sitemap and from pages that link to you. We discover URLs that you don't include in your Sitemap through these regular crawling processes --it just may take us longer, and we won't have any extra information that you can provide in a Sitemap (such as priority, last modification date, and change frequency).

We won't exclude URLs that you don't list in your Sitemap from the Google index.

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Searching what Google knows about your site


So, you've submitted your Sitemap. How can you tell what Google knows about your site?

You can use Google’s advanced search features to get a list of:
  • search results from your site
  • pages that link to your site
  • pages that refer to your site’s URL
You can also see information that we have about your site.

You can do many of these advanced searches (amazingly enough) by clicking the Advanced Search link on www.google.com. You can also use our advanced search operators in your query. If you are using operators, remember that there should not be a space between the operator and the URL. Note that we use brackets to indicate the words in the search box. The query itself should not include the brackets.

Results from your site (site: operator)
To find pages from your site, use the site: operator. For instance, [site:www.google.com]. You can also type the URL in the Domain field of the Advanced Search page.


You can also use this feature to search through any site. Simply enter the search query followed by the site: operator and the site you want to search through. For instance, to search for admission information on the Stanford University web site, type [admission site:www.stanford.edu]. And, you can use this feature to search through sites from specific top-level domains. For instance, to search for information about Zürich on Swiss sites in the .ch domain, type [Zürich site:.ch].

Pages that link to your site (link: operator)
To find pages that link to your site, use the link: operator. For instance, [link:www.google.com]. You can also type the URL in the Links field of the Advanced Search page.



Pages that refer to your site’s URL (allinurl: operator)
To find pages that include your site’s URL, use the allinurl: operator. For instance, [allinurl:www.google.com].

Information Google has about your site (info: operator)
To see information that Google knows about your site, use the info: operator. For instance, [info:www.google.com]. That query results in the following:


Some questions you may have about these results...

I submitted my Sitemap but I don't see all the pages listed. When will they be indexed?
We can't guarantee if or when we'll index pages we receive from Sitemaps submissions. We use Sitemaps as another view into your site to augment our regular crawling methods. Also, we don't want the Googlebot to overwhelm your bandwidth, so we may not crawl it all at one time.

Some of my results are labeled "Supplemental". What does that mean?
That means that pages are part of our auxiliary index. You can read more about that in our webmaster guidelines.

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Verifying your site


Verification
Once you verify your site, we show you additional statistics. We require verification to make sure that we only show these stats to site owners.

When you verify, we ask you upload a unique text file to a particular directory on your webserver. Periodically, we check to see if this file still exists. We do this to make sure you still own the site. If we can’t find this file when we recheck, we ask you to verify again.

Questions you might have about verification:

Once I’ve verified my site, can I delete the verification text file?
You can delete it once you’ve verified, but when we do our periodic check for it, we’ll ask you to upload it again.

Someone who used to have write-access to my site no longer does. How can I make sure this person can no longer see the stats for my site?
Simply delete the verification file. When we do our next periodic check, if that person tries to see stats for the site, we’ll ask for the file again. Since that person no longer has write access to the site, we won’t find the file and won’t show the additional statistics any longer.

But I still want to see stats for the site. How can I do that if my site is no longer verified?
We ask for a different verification file for each Google Account. You can log in with your Google Account and still see statistics.

The person who uploaded the Sitemaps for my site no longer has write access. I don’t have access to that person’s Google Account. How can I see information about my site?
Simply log in with your own Google Account and submit your Sitemaps using that account. We’ll ask you to upload a verification file that is unique to your Google Account so that you can see additional stats for your site.

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