Thursday, July 1, 2010

Google Sitemap - Support different content type in a single XML sitemap

On 29th June 2010 Google announced additional features in their XML sitemap. Before it was not possible to add different content type in a single XML sitemap but now you can add different content types like video, images, mobile URLs, code or geo information in your Google XML sitemap.

Google XML sitemap is the best way to let Google know about different pages and content of website and site owners and webmaster use this powerful tool get index by Google. They were working since 2005 from the time when they make this feature available and later introduced specialize sitemap formats that helps webmaster to add video, images, code, mobile URL and geographic content. Finally on 29th June 2010 Google had successfully introduced a single sitemap that accommodate different content types in a single file.

Here are the examples of different sitemap structure that used to specify different content type in a single Google XML sitemap.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1"
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/foo.html</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>
</image:image>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/videoABC.flv</video:content_loc>
<video:title>Grilling tofu for summer</video:title>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>


Some old features will still remain same like you can include maximum 50,000 URL in a sitemap and sitemap site must not exceed 10 MB.

Regards,
Bhavesh Goswami,
SEO & Web Promotion Expert.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sitemaps helps both new and existing sites improve their Google presence. The reason why I'm intrigued by the idea of a Google Sitemap.
-SEO Consultant

Unknown said...

Hi! thanks for posting this script. Now I know that google supports different type. However, as part of my consultancy job it's difficult to do SEO but it's rewarding.


SEO Consultant