Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to support single, unified, common sitemap protocol – a big relief for webmasters like me who want to keep updated all the search giants using sitemaps (although it is possible to ping only Google on updating every single thing in Blog). The task of informing blog search engines about updates has been made so easy by web behemoths.
According to Microsoft,
We are 100% behind this protocol – this kind of collaboration will help improve the search experience for all of our customers, and we are working hard to release full support in 2007.
As per Yahoo,
Together we’re announcing www.sitemaps.org, which provides details of the current release of the Sitemaps protocol and will include future updates as we continue to collaborate on this common protocol. By offering an open standard for web sites, webmasters can use a single format to create a catalog of their site URLs and to notify changes to the major search engines. This should make is easier for web sites to provide search engines with content and metadata.
And Google says,
We’re thrilled to tell you that Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining us in supporting the Sitemap protocol.
As part of this development, we’re moving the protocol to a new namespace, www.sitemaps.org, and raising the version number to 0.9. The sponsoring companies will continue to collaborate on the protocol and publish enhancements on the jointly-maintained site sitemaps.org
So Google didn’t refrain from taking the credit :roll:.
Don’t forget to visit sitemaps.org.