About Google Sitemap Generator – Part Two

As promised, this is a follow-up to my initial article on the new Google Sitemap Generator tool (click here to read that article). If you are not familiar with the Google Sitemap Generator you should read my first article before reading this one as I do not repeat any informaion from that article here.

First, let’s take a look at some of the applications screens, available after installing the software on your Web server. The first screen is the Dashboard.

The Dashboard

This is the screen you’ll see upon log-in. It displays a list of all the sites you have running on the server, pulling the list from your Web server software, such as Internet Information Server (IIS) on Windows or Apache on a Linux server.

It looks like this:

At the top-right of the screen is a “Preferences” link. This takes you to a page the enables “Allow remote access to the Administration Console.” The Sitemap Generator admin console can be accessed remotely, however, it has to be set up to run under HTTPS. I did not set it up to run remotely so I cannot provide any comment on that feature. Go to Google’s documentation to get the details on remote access.

There are two other links here, Default site settings and Manage sites.

Manage sites: This displays a list of all sites running on your server. You can elect here to de-select a site so that it is not running under the Sitemap Generator.

Default site: This provides access to global settings that will be applied to all sites. You can override these settings on a site-by-site basis as explained below. There are two groups of settings available here, Site configuration and Sitemap types. There are a lot of settings here some of which I have not explored. You’ll need to check Google’s documentation to see all the details.

Some of the more important features, found under the Sitemap types screen, are:

• Sitemap generation schedule: This allows you to set the default time for Sitemap generation. For example you can set this so that your sites have Sitemaps generated once a month or every minute! 
• Sitemap file setting: This sets the name of the xml file to be generated for each site. Note that each site’s Sitemap xml file will have the same filename. 
• Sitemap file submission: This allows you to have the Sitemap Generator auto-submit your Sitemap files to four different search engines: Google, MSN, Ask.com and Yahoo.

Individual Website Settings Screen

From the Dashboard, clicking on one of the sites listed will give you access to settings you can make that will apply to just that site. This tool gives you access to the two groups of settings mentioned above, Site configuration and Sitemap types. Changes here will override the global settings for the selected site.

Here’s what this screen looks like:

When you click through to the site the default screen is the Site status screen. Its elements are shown in the image above. I think this is pretty self explanatory. 

Making it All Work

One thing that is not really explained in the Google documentation for the Sitemap Generator is that in order for your Sitemaps to be actually uploaded and used by the search engines there are a few things you must do:

1. You must have an account for this purpose with the search engine, such as a Google Webmaster account for Google.
2. You must verify the site within the account using the tools provided there.
3. You should set the Sitemap filename within the account using the tools provided there.

For some of you this may seem perfectly obvious. I must be a moron as it was not at all obvioius to me. After a lot of searching and some good feedback from someone at Google who monitors the Sitemap Generator forum I finally came to understand the important, and now obvious, points above.

Once you have set up your accounts with the search engines, verified your sites and installed the expected Sitemap filename the whole process will be automated by the Google Sitemap Generator. Moving forward, you can control much of the process using the Google Sitemap Generator tools and settings.

To me, it’s definitely worth the effort!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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