Google, Yahoo and MSN to Standardize Site Maps

Google, MSN and Yahoo, the three most popular Web search engines have agreed to standardize their site-mapping services. Anyone who has attempted to optimize their Web site for search will tell you that cooperation among these three behemoths has been next to none in the past, which makes this a fairly significant development. www.sitemaps.org will provide details on what you need to include in your sitemap and the format that it needs to take to comply with the new uniform standards.

Sitemaps submitted directly to search engines are a bit different than a site map you might offer directly on your Web site, which is more like a table of linked contents for your home business website. It would be even better if the these three giants could somehow agree on what's important when it comes to returning search results. Because they each have their own definition of what creates the most "relevant" Web sites for top search results, it's often necessary to make compromises in your search engine optimization efforts in order not to get penalized by one search engine for tactics that another considers sacred.

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