Search Engine Sitemaps
Another module has been added to our Open Source initiative. Search Engine Sitemaps is the old EPiGoogleSitemaps but now you can make your own changes that fits your needs. The project can be found on epicode.
This module makes it easy for search engines to index your site. An XML sitemap is generated showing what pages the site contains and when they last were changed. It also shows how important the page is and how often it is changed. The two latter are saved in the sitemap file depending on a property (dynamic or regular) put on each page.
If you decide to use a dynamic property this can have negative influences to your sites performance. But in this case you do not want to choose each page and set the property on that single page. The inheritance that comes with dynamic property makes the module easier to use.
Add a dynamic property to your site called SearchEngineSitemaps of type SearchEngineSitemaps.
There are 7 settings you can set for showing how often a page is changed.
You can also set what priority the page has by choosing one of these
When you set these values be sure to be honest. Don't set everything to High Priority and always changing unless it does change.
In the admin mode you can now test it by clicking test
An index file is now generated showing where the sitemap file is. (for sites larges than 5000 pages several sitemap files are in the index.
The end results.
Dont forget to add the link to the sitemapindex file in the robots.txt as following:
Sitemap: http://labs.episerver.com/EPiGoogleSitemaps.SiteMapIndex.aspx
This module has only been tested with a site as large as world.episerver.com and since the sitemap is created on the fly performance on your site may suffer.
To download the module go to epicode
Best Regards
Jacob Khan
30 January 2009