Google Sitemaps Has Gone Through Many Changes!
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Few changes include the change of the name of sitemaps program, a possible new feature called Crawl Time & new verification method.
Today, Google anounced that the name of Google Sitemaps will be changed from Google Sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools. They have launched the new blog too for that and the webmaster tools blog can be accessed from here : Webmaster Central Blog
Another possible new feature is Crawl Time : Now, I can't confirm this but you can only trust me this. I saw this link myself while I was checking my Sitempas account. I clicked on the link and it gave me "page can't be found". I went back to take the screenshot and suddenly the link was gone. I tried to use the browser history but somehow it did'nt work. Now, the possibilty is that google will give the ability to the users to send the Googlebot whenever they like or whenever they make a change. Believe me, it is one tool, which I am looking for quite some time.
New Verification Method : Now, sitemaps or webmaster tools will allow you to verify the site using two methods. One is the old traditional method of uploading a blank file of name google**********.html (* can be any alphanumeric character and the number of these characters may vary too) and the other one is using meta tag verification, where google will give you a code, which a person will need to place in between the [head][/head] tag of the html pages and this will verify the site.
It is to be noted that insertion of the code is just for verification and that does'nt mean that your site does'nt need sitemap anymore.
In case you notice anymore changes, feel free to post a comment. And what do you think about the possible crawl time feature?
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