DIY: XML Sitemap Submission and Validation

Tuesday I went through the process of creating an XML sitemap and demystifying autodiscovery. Today, as promised, we will delve into getting those sitemaps into the figurative hands of the search engines.

"Hey," you might say, "but if I've created my sitemap and bolstered it with autodiscovery, can't Google find it on their own?" Of course. But since no one except Google knows their own schedule, would you prefer to rely on a blind run or say "Hey Google! Over here!"

And while I am talking about Google in generalized terms, we will be covering validation and submission with the Big 4: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, and Ask.

The Setup

The basic setup for most of these is the same: you will validate that you have control over the site and submit a "feed" or sitemap. The validation process is either adding a validation meta tag to your home page or dropping a validation file in your root directory. Whether a tag or file, it's just an alphanumeric validation string so Google et. al. can prove that you own or have direct access to the site. The secondary part is telling them where your site is.

Google

You will need a Google Account for this one. Once you have that, go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools. Add a site. Validate your site by adding a meta tag to your home page or uploading a file to your root directory. Post the link to your sitemap. You're done!

Yahoo

You will need a Yahoo login for this one as well. Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites. Just like Google, you're going to validate with a file or meta tag and post your XML sitemap "feed."

Microsoft Live

Again, you'll need a Microsoft login, hotmail or the like, to get into this site. Go to http://webmaster.live.com/. Rinse and repeat: upload a file to your site for validation and list your sitemap. Blammo!

No work yet on how bing.com will handle the issue.

Ask

This one's easy. Simply put this string into your browser:

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml

And that will ping the site to tell it your sitemap is ready for viewing and crawling.


Is sitemap submission a necessity? No, it is not; eventually the search engines will pick up on your sitemap or autodiscovery and get to crawling. But if you're a "cover all bases" and "ASAP" person like I am, go ahead and spend the half hour it takes to knock out all four of these and go to sleep a little easier.

I'm happy to take any questions or comments in, well, the comments area.

Chat Widgets for Your Website

Because not everyone has Trillian running on their system with 9 different accounts funneled into it (seriously, I do), I wanted to make the time investment to make sure people could chat with me whenever they wanted to. I have succeeded on the EJM Designs Limited Chat page.

The bonus to providing this service is that while you need an active AIM, Google, or Y!M login, your website visitor does not.

AIM WIMZI Widget

Visit AIM's WIMZI page and sign in next to the orange question mark in the grey area above the options section (or it will not give you the source code). Then fill out your specs and click the "Create it" button to get the source code. Paste into your website.

Mine looks like this:



Pluses: easy setup, shows I'm connected when using Trillian. No minuses so far. Must stick to my webpage to chat, but with tabs today (I have 10 open now), not a biggie.

Google Talk Widget

Log into your Google Account and head on over to the Google Talk Widget Page. Set your Preferences, update the code, copy, paste into your website, and voila! You get this:



Visitor will click on the link which will open a separate chat window. Pluses: Easy setup, simple styling, and even though stuck on the page isn't a detraction, I like the separate window. Flexibility. And ALT-Tab is easier than CTRL-Tab. Go about your business. Chat with me. Minuses: Because Trillian does not gobble up Google Talk, I need to be logged into this account to hear from you on my site. That happens for about 25% of the day.

Yahoo Messenger Pingbox

Go to the Pingbox studio, enter your parameters, copy and paste. Looks like this:



Pluses: Easy setup. Minuses: FAIL. When you get to the second page of setup, every time you change the dimensions, the object id attribute changes as well, which wouldn't be an issue at all if the characters didn't change to include - 75% of the time - Chinese and other definitively unicode characters that show up as boxes and don't paste as anything other than question marks.

(sidenote: tweaks to the widget size have a lower limit of 180x320 and will repeatedly reset in the interface despite no stated limits, though change in pasted code to 160 width shows up fine.)

And once you tease it enough to hand you basic ascii, logging in through Trillian or logging in through Yahoo Mail still shows you are not logged in on the widget. Bad widget!

My only guess on this one is that you actually need to be logged in through Yahoo Messenger, though I'm not sure why as Trillian's login to Yahoo always upsets the messenger-through-mail. And because I won't download Yahoo Messenger to test this theory...FAIL!

Why do you think I've got Trillian installed? 9 IM accounts. Duh. Removed from page.


Snark aside, and Yahoo aside, the Google and AIM widgets are lovely and it's only because of the Google login that I must go with AIM FTW!

Let me know your thoughts on whether website widgets are a good idea or a pain. Should we allow anyone to contact us anywhere anytime? Ups and downs?

Yahoo Registration Fail

In the ever-expanding world of fine-tuning EJM Designs Limited, I recently switched my AIM and Yahoo IM names to fall more in line with branding. The old one was "estragon420," and while 420 is there because it's my wedding anniversary, I've received more than one comment about it being a marijuana reference. And how professional is that?

AIM is a stinker because it doesn't allow any non-alpha-numeric characters, so I couldn't have a straight "eric.ejmdesigns" for all my IM parts.

But the story here was a delicious fail from Yahoo:



Note to Yahoo's dev crew: mm/dd/yyyy is a very standard format for dates. Unfortunately, "mm" is generally - no, always - a reference to the two digit representation for the month. Not the whole word. Perhaps QA was on vacation that week?

Goofs aside, you can view my new AIM/YIM in the right column. Drop me a line sometime, even just to say Hi.

Nielsen Online Search Share Numbers

Last week, Nielsen Online came out with the search share numbers for December 2008 (PDF).

Guess who's on top?

% share of total searches
Google - 62.9%
Yahoo - 16.8%
Microsoft Live/MSN - 9.8%
AOL - 4.1%
Ask - 2.0%

While the number of searches overall jumped 19.6% from December '07, the only one of the top 5 above to lose out was Microsoft, dumping at -15.5% from the previous year.

I can't say I'm surprised. Ever since Microsoft slowly and cripplingly attempted a crossover from MSN to Live and dumped resources into mirrors of Google apps (that no one wanted because, hey, Google's already got an app for that), I've been watching the steady, systematic decline of what can only be looked at as: as X approaches infinity, Y approaches zero. We will never reach infinity in reality just as Microsoft will never reach zero. Because they're Microsoft.

Which provides a long, slow tail in which to enjoy Google walk away with their numbers like a thief in the night.