What is a Sitemap?

A Websitemap informs search engines that individual pages on your Website are new or updated and are available for crawling. The Websitemap protocol consists of an XML file that includes your website URLs and three other optional pieces of information for each page:

• How often the URL is updated.
• The last time the URL was updated.
• A priority of the URL relative to the other pages on the Website.

Sitemaps help ensure all new and difficult-to-find pages are indexed quickly and completely, and are particularly useful for websites that are difficult for search engines to crawl and index effectively. Your website benefits from applying a Websitemap if it:

• Is modified frequently.
• Uses Javascript of Flash® for navigation or content display.
• Contains a large database or archive of pages that may be accessible only through a search function.

Using a Websitemap does not ensure that search engines will pick up every page of your Website, but it does provide hints for search engines to more intelligently crawl your Website.

Using the Websitemap Manager in the Hosting Control Panel, you can easily create a Websitemap for your primary domain, subdomains, or aliased domains to automatically point search engines directly at domains in your Shared Hosting account. For more information, see Working with Websitemaps in the Hosting Control Panel.

For additional information on Websitemaps, visit sitemaps.org.