sitemaps - should we be using Google's sitemaps

[JJ]

I'm playing aournd with my first asp.net 2.0 web site and looking at the
Web.sitemap file.

It seems there's a lot of publicity at the moment about Google's sitemaps
and how they are supposed to get your site more likely to be indexed.

Do we therefore use Googles, the standard web.sitemap file, or both??
If anyone has used the Google version, is there any way of getting it to
work with the TreeView and SiteMapPath controls?

JJ

 

[Guest]

The ASP.NET 2.0 Web.sitemap has absolutely NOTHING to do with a google
sitemap. Yes, google sitemaps work, when properly constructed.
Peter

 

[Steve C. Orr [MVP, MCSD]]

You're kind of comparing apples to oranges.
Google's site maps serve a fairly different purpose than ASP.NET's site
maps.
Generally ASP.NET's site maps are not directly exposed to the internet, they
are just used for internal plumbing.
I can envision writing some code that reads ASP.NET's site map and outputs a
dynamic Google site map. That might be cool.

 

[JJ]

I might do just that....

I'll let you know how I get on. Incidentally, what are the security concerns
if you do allow web access to your asp .net sitemap file?

JJ

 

[Steve C. Orr [MVP, MCSD]]

As long as it's read-only access I can't think of very many security
concerns unless you're taking advantage of some of the advanced features
such as role filtering.

 

[JJ]

Thats what I thought.

I've found this code by Bertrand Le Roy
http://weblogs.asp.net/bleroy/archive/2005/12/02/432188.aspx
- that generates the google sitemap from the current web.sitemap. It even
gets the lastmoddate from the physical file if it isn't set.
I think I'll use something like this to handle Google sitemap, and use the
asp web.sitemap for generating menus etc.

JJ

 

[JJ]

Actually I think I see what you may mean and what the security concerns
are....

If I have limited access pages, should I include them in my web.sitemap
file?
If my menu system feeds of my web.sitemap, how could I only show those menu
items that an authorised user should see.....??

 

[Guest]

JJ,
the business rule is simple: If you don't want the googlebot to index a
page, don't include it in your sitemap.
Peter

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