Google explains everything and lists Sitemaps resources at:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

To use Google sitemaps, you must first sign up for a Google Account. If you already use Google Adwords, Analytics, Gmail or other Google provided tools, you can use your existing account to submit a Google sitemap for your site. Get an account at the following URL if you don’t already use Google services:

https://www.google.com/accounts/

NON-PROGRAMMER SMALL BUSINESS WEBMASTERS WANT SIMPLICITY

Many webmasters struggle to understand even the simplest HTML and meta tags and after visiting the Sitemaps program page when it was first announced in the summer of 2005, those small business site owners went away sadly shaking their heads and mumbling. They complained, “I can’t even add PERL scripts to my own CGI bin and properly set permissions on page files – how am I going to install and debug a Python script on my server, run cron jobs and generate XML files?”

Apparently Google heard all that grumbling and came back with the newly released “Webmaster Central” to answer the concerns of excess complexity. They no longer require you to be a geek to get all your pages into their index. They’ve created tools to make the job of submitting all of your pages for inclusion in their index very much easier to handle.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

The first listed “Site Status” tool lets you check indexing of your sites. If you enter an address into that search box and press the “Next” button, they’ll return a page with a button labeled “Take me to Google Sitemaps” and encouraging use of the sitemaps tools, regardless of whether you’ve already submitted that sitemap or not. They’ll list some minor details about the site entered such as:

Pages from your site are included in Google’s index.
Some of these pages are indexed without a title or description.
Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Aug 18, 2006

They list “Potential indexing problems” and then state:

More details about your site may be available

By using Google Sitemaps, you can learn more details available only to site owners, such as:

o errors Googlebot encountered while crawling your site

o top search queries that return your site

GOOGLE SITEMAPS DIFFERENT FROM HTML SITEMAPS

Let’s back up for a moment though. Webmasters have been told for ten years now to build a sitemap into their web site that lists all of their pages (if it is a small web site with under a hundred pages) or at least listing major sections of their site (if they have thousands or tens of thousands of pages.) So what is the difference here?

Google sitemaps are actually XML documents (not public html pages) that hold much more information about your web pages to help Google determine several things. They list the “priority” or importance, “last modified” dates, and “change frequency” of each page. But the creation of those documents had required webmasters to install that Python script on their server. Available at:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=137793&package_id=153422

Or webmasters had to use third party software to generate the required XML file. Google recommends a brief list of sources for third party software to help them programmatically create the XML sitemaps:

http://code.google.com/sm_thirdparty.html

I’ve personally tried several of those third party tools and found two of the web-based sitemap generators lacking, one of the downloaded software tools crashed my computer (and created havoc for me), so what is a small business owner without programming skills to do?

Those business owners who are non-programmer types and want to use Google Sitemaps complained that Google was favoring geeks over business owners. They wanted a simple way to submit all of their pages to Google without running cron jobs on their server and debugging Python scripts.

PLAIN TEXT SITEMAPS FILES NOW ACCEPTED

Google heard our grumbling and now allows simple lists of URL’s in a plain text document. All you have to do is create that list of page files, save it as sitemap.txt and upload it to your server. Then you log in to your Google Webmaster Central (AKA Sitemaps) account and tell them the URL of your sitemap text document.

Before you submit your first sitemap URL on a domain, Google requires you to put a “site verification” meta tag on your site home page and click a “Verify” button to prove you own the site. Anyone with a Google account and access to your server can do this. You can add or remove any authorization tags placed by anyone with access to your server who is no longer authorized to see this data.

WEBMASTER CENTRAL TOOLS FOR SITE OWNERS

In the “Diagnostic” tab, there is a tool that will validate your robots.txt file, tells you which pages are restricted by that file and lists problem URL’s and reasons for the problems. It also lets you make changes in a copy of your robots.txt file locally, which shows immediately how changes would affect the next crawl by all Google bots, including the Adsense and PPC landing page quality crawlers! They warn on that page that local changes don’t affect your own robots.txt file and remind you to make the changes to the file on your server.

Another useful “Diagnostic” tool lets you set your preference for canonical URL’s to include www or non-www versions of your site. (This last item shows how seriously the Google team takes this canonical issue.)

What other tools are provided in Webmaster Central?

Under the “Statistics” tab in Webmaster Central is are “Query stats, Crawl stats, Page analysis” links with more data on your pages. The Query statistics show your top 20 search queries that searchers have used to find your web site and your top 20 click through queries. Those data tables provide some interesting and sometimes unexpected detail about how visitors find your site and allow you to further optimize and funnel those visitors. The “Crawl Stats” promises to show PageRank and distribution of PageRank throughout your site and in comparison to other sites.

The “Sitemaps” tab simply lists your submitted sitemaps for all your sites and shows the dates “Submitted, Last Downloaded, and Sitemap Status.” The status tells you if there are errors, and what they were (not allowed, external site links, 404 error page not found, etc.) I’ve just submitted a new sitemap on a just reserved, created and newly posted site this week and will report back on how long it took for index inclusion on that site to record the effect of early sitemap submissions.

LIFTING YOUR SKIRT FOR GOOGLE

Finally, there is a “Tools” link in the upper right corner of the “Sitemaps” page which allows you to “Download Data for all sites”, “Report Spam in Our Index” and a “Reinclusion Request” link to use if you’ve been banned for questionable techniques. Clearly, since you are doing all of this from within a Google account, you are openly providing Google with your information and making all spam reporting and reinclusion requests under your name from within a Google account. This suggests that you trust Google with all information they hold on your sites and any complaint made about search engine spam.

Currently there are ratings tools from within the Webmaster Central site to let you tell Google if you like the tools with a smily face, a neutral face and a frowny face. This may not last as the program comes out of beta, but lets you tell them what is useful and what isn’t.

Still need some help? Try joining, reading, searching and posting to Sitemaps and Webmaster Central Google Groups. Posts from webmasters get back responses from knowledgeable members. Watch for the little green “G” logo for Sitemaps team members for particularly definitive and useful recommendations.

http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help
http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemaps

Want ongoing official Google blog posts about Webmaster Central?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

If you’ve had trouble getting all your pages indexed and want to use those informative and useful webmaster tools and reports – give Webmaster Central a try.

Mike Banks Valentine operates SEOptimism, Offering SEO training of in-house content managers
http://seoptimism.com/SEO_Staff_Training.htm as well as contract SEO for advertising agencies, web development companies and marketing firms. http://seoptimism.com/Ad_Agency_SEO_Contracting.htm

Content aggregation, article and press release optimization & distribution for linking campaigns.
http://seoptimism.com/Linking_SEO.htm

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_Valentine

Fellow webmasters will recognize my slight desperation,
my total sense of unease when Google dances. It all has to
do with pre-conditioning, psych majors will know this,
I am well conditioned to react. I have been burnt horribly
by Google dances in the past so my panic is almost palatable.
Forget Pavlov’s dog, when Google dances, webmasters like
me salivates.

And Google is really dancing this time, Jagger has nothing
on this baby. Nobody dances like Google, even puts Seinfeld’s
Elaine to shame. And if you’re new to the webmaster’s favorite
folly, a Google dance happens with Google adjusts its ranking
algorithm, causing a ripple effect and adjustments in the
rankings of keywords. Sites move up or down. Previous major
Google dances have been called Florida, Austin, Bourbon…

When Google dances, webmasters sweat bullets. And it’s not
all in their heads. It’s not psychosomatic. Horror stories abound,
about honest hard working webmasters (not a black hat to be seen)
suddenly waking up to find their site or sites gone from Google.
Thousands of daily visitors/customers to their site vanish
in an algorithmic fog overnight. Swift. Brutal. Painful.

Gone, top ranking keywords nowhere to be seen. Gone, visitors,
visitors, visitors. Gone, sales, sales, sales…

More times than not, the sites come back or regain their
positions (rankings for popular keywords — for the totally
uninitiated, keywords or keyword phrases are what people type
into search engines to find what they’re looking for), keywords
are the conerstones of the whole Internet. Without them, the
Internet as we know it, would not work.

Mastering Google means mastering your site’s keywords or phrases.
Get a top ten SERPs ranking for your keywords and changes are
very good you will have a successful site. Webmasters work
for years getting their site’s keywords up into the
top keyword ranking spots. Countless fortunes have been made
by those who have mastered the game. Countless fortunes have
tumbled when Google dances.

Of course, the sensible thing to do is for all webmasters
to unite and bring Google down a peg or two. At least in our
own minds, if not in the real world. Don’t place so much
importance on Google. Yes, it’s very important, but snap out
of it. The more webmasters whine and moan about Google’s
erratic dances, algorithm and rankings – the more power we are
giving Google.

Why is Google still so important to webmasters? MSN and Yahoo
are gaining ground but Google is still the top dog and here’s
why: As far as the search engine market goes, whether it’s
wearing a halo or a cursor, Google is still the only game in town.
According to Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, the top
three sites on the Web are 1-Yahoo, 2-MSN, and 3-Google. However,
when you compare where people go on these sites: search.yahoo.com
accounts for only 9% of Yahoo’s traffic and search.msn.com only
7% of MSN’s total traffic; whereas most of Google’s traffic is
search traffic. This is a big distinction.

Once burnt, twice shy. Years ago, the Florida Update totally wiped
my site from the Google Radar. Hence my total apprehension
when one of these dances comes along. I wanted my site to survive
the next Google dance so I put some simple strategies into place that
would hopefully help me weather this and future Google dances.
Strategies that you might also find helpful to fight your
own private battle with Google.

Here’s what I did and what you can also do:

Find A Good SEO Expert

Find a good SEO expert and have him or her in your corner.
I found Brad Callen. One of a very few people who truly
understands Google and knows how it works. I learned much
of what makes Google really tick from Brad. I advise you to
find or hire a SEO expert like Brad to help you out with your
site or sites. Just the fact of having a SEO expert in your
corner makes handling Google a little bit easier.

Link Only To Safe Sites

One of the simplest ways to keep on the good side
of Google is to make sure all links on your site
link only to sites that have a PR4 or over.
Don’t link to bad neighborhoods, avoid linkfarms like
the avian flu.

One Keyword To A Page

The major mistake most webmasters make – they don’t
focus on one keyword phrase per page. Try to keep
your pages separate, write on one or two closely
related keyword phrases for each webpage and you
will see a big improvement from Google. Don’t keyword
spam but sprinkle your keyword phrase and variations
of it throughout your copy.

RSS To The Rescue

Creating an RSS feed and Blog for your site’s major keywords
is as simply as starting a free blog with Blogger.com
(owned by Google), it can be done in a few minutes.

I favor using Blogger because it now has the Google Blog search
bar at the top. Blog search will bring in a lot of traffic and
your content is instantly indexed in Google. What more can you
ask for. Whatever you do, don’t underestimate RSS, it’s going
to play a major role in the Internet of the near future. Especially
when Microsoft comes out with its Longhorn browser which will
be RSS empowered.

Embrace Article Marketing

If you can string two sentences together start writing articles
on the major keywords or topics of your site. Place your
links in the resource box of your articles and submit them
to online article directories like EzineArticles.com or
buzzle.com. Write helpful ‘how-to’ articles and other
webmasters will place your articles on their sites and
you will get an ambundance of one-way links back to your
site. Google loves these kinds of links and since the
sites picking up your articles will all be related to
your site’s topic, these will be relevant links.

Customer/Visitor Focused Content

Besides high PR links to your sites, Google also loves
content. Write unique content that’s related to your
site’s topic and write a lot of it. It’s the main reason
anyone bothers to come to your site in the first place,
so make sure you have good original content. Add high
quality articles from sources you respect and your
visitors will have another reason to visit your site.

Keep saying to yourself: content is king, content is
king. Make sure you put that belief into practice and
Google will reward you nicely. Well, maybe. Nine times
out of ten.

Actually, this time my site jumped to PR5 and my Google
backlinks went up. Also some of my keywords are up but
most have stayed the same. Overall, my traffic from
Google remains the same which is very worrisome, if
I moved up to PR5 — my traffic should theoretically rise
also. I saw a dramatic rise in traffic when my site
went to PR4.

Such are the little puzzling mine-fields, whether intentionally
or not (I can’t believe anyone could be this sadistic!) Google
throws every webmaster’s way. Over time, if you let it
get to you, it will drive you stark raving bonkers.
Especially, if you are seriously building an income, lifestyle
and well-being around the Internet and by default Google.

For every webmaster, Google is a never ending endurance
race of strategies, positioning and planning. Keeping
one step ahead of this search engine while keeping
your eyes peeled for the men in white, is a never ending
struggle. One every webmaster must fight and win on their
own terms. Follow the simple steps above, and you will be
better prepared for the next Google dance.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins

For better or worst, Google has permeated into almost every aspect
of our everyday life. Being Googled is now a common expression and
an act carried out by millions of users around the world each day.
New Google products and services are coming on stream at a frightening
pace, further increasing Google’s impact on our lives.

Despite this dominating presence, many people still don’t realize
Google offers some excellent free marketing tools for marketers
and webmasters. Marketing tools which can prove extremely valuable
to any webmaster or marketer trying to promote their sites or
products online. Useful tools that will make your promotions
easier and much more profitable.

Don’t be fooled by the ‘free’ label, these marketing tools
might be free but there are also valuable. One even wonders
why Google would be giving away these tools and services for
free? It probably makes good business sense in the long
run, by providing these free tools Google is fostering a
lot of company good-will and building up the Google brand
name in the process. Good PR is good business.

Every marketer and webmaster should be taking advantage of
Google’s good-will and snapping up these professionally run
services and marketing tools. Here’s a quick run-down of
the 10 most valuable free Google Internet marketing tools:

1. Google Analytics

Perhaps the premier marketing tool offered by Google.
It will prove helpful to both the marketer and the webmaster.
Google Analytics gives you a daily snapshot of your web site. Google
Analytics analyzes your traffic, where it comes from and what it does
once it enters your site. You can monitor up to three sites
for free.

Google Analytics is extremely valuable in analyzing your
marketing funnel, it tracks all the steps leading up to your
sales or checkout page. Vital information for raising
your conversion rate and ROI.

You may be placed on a waiting list for this highly in
demand service from Google.

LINK http://www.google.com/analytics/

2. Google Sitemaps

Webmasters can use Google Sitemaps to almost instantly place
newly created pages on their site into the Google Search Index.
This is an XML file that is uploaded to Google as new pages
are added on your site. Needless to say this can be a valuable
service for any webmaster or marketer who wants to get their
information on the web quickly.

LINK https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

3. Google Alerts

Be notified when someone or another site lists your site
or mentions your name. Great way to keep track of all your
online activities. Great way to monitor all your online
business interests and products.

LINK http://www.google.com/alerts

4. Google Froogle

Froogle is Google’s price directory! It simply lists all
the cheapest prices for different products on the web.
For marketers and webmasters who are promoting products,
it should be studied and analyzed. Optimizing your
site’s content for Froogle may prove to be very beneficial.

Follow Froogle or Google directions exactly on how to
list or display products on your site. Froogle will
spider your site and display your prices and products
to thousands of targeted customers. That, as they say,
is priceless.

LINK http://froogle.google.com/

5. Google Checkout

Not exactly free but for those marketers who use AdWords
— for every $1 spent on AdWords you can process $10 for free.
You can also place the shopping cart logo on your AdWords ad
and take advantage of the prestige and trust the Google
brand name has built up.

Over time marketers may find this tool to be very
effective and valuable.

LINK https://checkout.google.com/

6. Google eBlogger

Blogging has become vitally important to the health and
functioning of your web site. No site should be without
at least one blog and RSS feed. Creating a blog (online journal)
on the topic of your web site or product will bring in extra traffic
and targeted customers. eBlogger is a simple free
blogging service that even lets you publish or post your blog
files to your own web site server. Keep in mind, each blog
has that all important Google Blog Search bar.

LINK http://www.blogger.com/

7. Google Toolbar – Enterprise Version

Try the new enterprise version of the Google Toolbar
for your company or business. Integrates countless
features with all your employees or corporate
network. These could include a common customer
database, company calendar, financial news…

Keep in mind, Google also ranks every page it indexes on
a scale of 0-10. While it is important to know the Page Rank of
your own pages, it is even more important to know the PR of
your competitor’s pages. You can use the toolbar to get
the PR of each page you’re visiting. Extremely helpful
information for webmasters and marketers to know when
forming online linking or business arrangements.

LINK http://toolbar.google.com/T4/enterprise/

8. Google Groups

Every marketer knows the important of having a large
contact list of people with a similar interest. Social
networking will play an ever increasing role in your
success on the web. Just look at the growing popularity
of sites like MySpace and LiveJournal.

Google groups is another form of social and business
networking that every marketer should be aware of and
pursuing.

LINK http://groups.google.com/

9. Google Adsense

One simple way to monetize your web content is to
use Google Adsense. Just place the Adsense code
on your site and receive a check from Google each
month. For webmasters who are not really into
online marketing (does such creatures exist?) Adsense
can be a painless way to earn extra income from
your site.

For professional marketers using the Adsense system can
supply a tremendous amount of marketing information on the
keywords in their particular niche. It keeps the
marketer informed on what keywords are being bid
on and how much advertisers are willing to pay.

Adsense also has an excellent real-time tracking
system you can use to keep track of all your
important web pages.

LINK https://www.google.com/adsense/

10. Google Writely

A recent addition to Google’s stable of free products.
Writely is a full featured online writing editor with
spellcheck and great collaborating features. It also
lets you publish your content directly to your blogs.
One feature that may be of interest to marketers, it lets
your save files in the popular download format of PDF.

Lets face it, until video takes over the web in four
or five years time — the written word is still king on the
net. It is the medium that markets, promotes and sells
your content or products. Writely will help you write better.

LINK http://www.writely.com

Honorable Mention – Google Trends

This Google program will let you search popular trends,
important for marketers searching for the latest hot
product to promote. You can also break down these trends
by different regions.

LINK http://www.google.com/trends

Final Note

Please take note that signing up for a Google account will
usually help you in obtaining most of these free services or
programs. Some of these programs may have to be applied for
individually. But be assured, all these free Google marketing
tools are well worth your time and effort. They will make your
marketing easier and they will help any webmaster or marketer
run their online business more efficiently.

…
The author is a full-time online marketer who runs numerous web sites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools Everyone is profiting from Google, why not you? Click here: Google Cash File Copyright © 2006 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins

Google started out as the beloved child, a fledgling start up that was all heart, and today they are a “hated” brand. Why the fall from grace? In some ways Google is a victim of the too big, too powerful, and too successful affliction that attacks companies that achieve a level of success that few companies dream of. Now that does not mean that I am giving them a pass, they have room to improve and I really do not hate them. I just think there is a lot of areas they could improve.

I sat down and wrote an open letter to Google about my wishes and dreams for their future:

Dear Google,

Please consider the following for areas of improvement.

1. Usenet and RSS.

Please, I’m begging, (groveling if it will help) create RSS feeds for Google Groups keyword searches. Think of the value, you could monitor Usenet for company or product names using RSS feeds. This would be an extremely easy way for businesses (and Google users) to stay in tune with what is being said on Usenet and in forums about specific topics.

2. Privacy Policy.

Clarify Google’s privacy policy, and tell me EXACTLY how you are going to use the aggregate data you collect. While most of us realize that the personal information collected is of little value, the aggregate data is extremely valuable. Google is an extremely powerful company, and this collective data gives them a huge advantage in negotiating acquisitions or determining trends. Many of us respect Google, its size and power, but do not necessarily want to contribute to Google’s additional growth. Implement a way for customers wishing to pay a fee, to opt not to have their data aggregated or tracked.

3. Protect Your Customers.

For goodness sake, don’t make it so easy for people to rip off software companies. Why do you suggest cracks or serials on the Google Suggest tool? Please help protect the intellectual property of your customers!

http://labs.google.com/suggest

4. Stop Tracking Everything I do!

I login in to Writely (now Google Docs) and feel as if I am being stalked, you monitor searches, you monitor tracking through analytics, you monitor advertising through Google Adwords, you monitor money earned as a publisher through Google AdSense, and now you have connected many of the accounts together. Please give users a little privacy, or the ability to easily manage multiple logins.

5. Tell Me How Much I Make!

Clearly tell publishers what percentage range they can expect to receive when they serve AdSense on their content websites. Now, I understand that it might vary publisher to publisher, but disclose a range. Or at the very least, consider adopting a model similar to Amazon’s where publishers percentage of revenue earned is based on their volume.

6. Google Alert via RSS.

The current Google alert system is from the 1990’s (figuratively speaking) please offer an option to receive Google alerts via RSS feeds. I know you can setup a Google News search using RSS, it seems silly that it is not available via Google Alerts.
http://www.google.com/alerts

7. Faster Blog Indexing.

Google is all about search, right? Why are they so slow at indexing blogs? In fact the Google blog search performs far worse than many of the blog specific search engines. Search should be Google’s strength instead of a weakness. Even the breadth of blogs searched, and the related blogs listed on Google’s blog search are on the thin side. Definitely room for improvement in this area.

http://blogsearch.google.com

8. Same Rules.

I wish that the rules were the same for all AdSense publishers regardless of the revenue that they produced. In talking with publishers, it is clear that there are a different set of standards, based on the revenue produced or traffic that a website receives. Keep the playing field even, if someone is using a subversive tactic, they should have be penalized regardless of their revenue.

9. Combat 2nd Generation Fraud.

What is second generation fraud? Fraudsters bid high for AdWords, what they are paying for keywords or phrasing is irrelevant, because the credit card they are using is fraudulent. They make legitimate affiliate sales through the website and profit from their “free” traffic. Google should help connect the dots on these sites, and ban the websites from their organic index.

10. Drop DMOZ.

Please either drop the Google Dmoz directory listings, or pay to staff DMOZ with reputable editors who can keep up. The Dmoz listings are hopelessly outdated and not reflective of current websites.

11. Protect Copyrights / Trademarks.

Google seems to flip-flop on the issue of allowing competitors to bid on branded words in their AdWords accounts. The current policy appears to be, that competitors cannot use a trademark in the advertisement, but competitors can still bid on trademarked terms. A company Google’s size should have more respect for trademarks. I really wish Google would stand firm on the issue of trademarks and prevent competitors from bidding on the terms.

12. Bury the Sandbox.

Dispose of the sandbox or aging delay, or heck get rid of both. Face it, valuable websites are created every day. The Internet is fluid and valuable websites should not be penalized because of their youth. The sandbox and aging delay, may deter spam sites, but there must be a better way.

13. Let Me Be Anonymous!

Why do you need my personal information? Does it really matter in the big scheme of everything that Google does? Why do you require my personal information?

14. Stop Putting US Companies at a Disadvantage.

Canadian and non-US companies can setup literally hundreds of AdSense publisher accounts, yet US companies are tracked using tax ID numbers hence they can only have one account.

15. Weigh Wikipedia Less.

Lets face it, ANYONE can edit Wikipedia. The information read in Wikipedia might be accurate one day and incorrect the next. Wikipedia is a nice resource, but is not a reliable indicator of information. Please do not use links from Wikipedia to indicate a sites worth. Wikipedia uses the same model as Dmoz which has languished, volunteers can only do so much.

16. Make an RSS Search Engine.

Why hasn’t Google done this? I am baffled. The blog search engine is not an RSS search engine, consider the power of being able to search ALL RSS feeds. There are a number of small RSS search engine portals available but there is not a clear leader, this is where Google could and should be.

17. Stop Buying Companies.

Stop the purchasing, Google is big enough already. Finish all the things that Google has started. Keep in mind that while the archives on the Internet might last forever, it is rare that companies retain power and clout for any length of time. Remember Infoseek, or Altavista? Focus on your strengths.

While my Google wish list might seem trivial, these are all things that Google could do to earn their way back into my good graces.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=S._Housley