Did you ever think that Yahoo Search would adopt Google’s sitemaps service? Apparently the protocol is now its own standard. This means you can ping the big three at the following URLs:

• MSN: http://search.live.com/ ping?sitemap=sitemap_url
• Yahoo: https://siteexplorer.search. http://www.google.com/ webmasters/sitemaps/ ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

What does this mean?

First, it’s interesting that users get to tell a search engine what to search, how to index, and what’s been updated. Decoding that information used to be the sole responsibility of the search crawler–now it’s a webmaster’s configuration. Second, it’s a unified format that all the search engines can read. Perhaps there will now be better indexing from #2 Yahoo and #3 MSN as they try to catch up with Google. Whatever happens, more traffic is good for us bloggers

3 Responses to “Sitemaps now Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo supported”

1. Josh Chandler says:

   11/17/2006 at 5:54 pm

   It is good to see Microsoft and Yahoo doing this it will be so helpful for me to be able to submit to them that way

   Josh Chandler
   http://www.techilious.wordpress.com

   Reply
2. Hong Xiaowan, hongxiaowan says:

   11/26/2006 at 1:26 am

   http://www.hongxiaowan.com
   Sitebases, the next protocol after Sitemaps
   It can save the time and press for the search engine, also for the websites.
   It can bring new search engine that named Search Engine 2.0.
   Using Sitebases protocol, will save 95% bandwidth above. It is another sample for long tail theory.
   In this protocol, I suggested that all search engine can share their Big Sitebases each other, so the webmaster just need to submit their Sitebases to one Search Engine.
   And I suggested that all search engines can open their search API for free and unlimited using.

   Please visit: http://www.sitebases.org

   Reply
3. Glenn says:

   1/6/2007 at 10:16 am

   its a great news dude!, actually i never thought that MSN bot can handle pings.. its a good news to all SEO.

   Reply