Google Launches Google Sitemaps for Webmasters

Google has launched its new Google Sitemaps program for webmasters. The free service, currently in beta, allows site owners to direct Google’s crawlers to modified content more efficiently - rather than simply waiting for Google to spider their entire site.

Google Sitemaps FAQ - Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling. Using Sitemaps to inform and direct our crawlers, we hope to expand our coverage of the web and improve the time to inclusion in our index. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on your webserver, you enable our crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly.
Basically, the two steps to participating in Google Sitemaps are:
1. Generate a Sitemap in the correct format using Sitemap Generator.
2. Update your Sitemap when you make changes to your site.

SearchEngineJournal - This sounds pretty good. However, the problem I see is that in order to get started, you have to install some scripts on your sever. Webmasters “should have knowledge of uploading files to their webserver, connecting to their webserver, and running scripts. In addition, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your webserver - check with your web hosting company if you are unsure".

Bottom line: you have to be a technical guy or have a technical guy to help you in order to take advantage of Google Sitemaps. To make people’s life easier, Google also says “If any of these requirements are not met, you can still submit a Sitemap to the Google Sitemaps program in simple text format."

WebProNews - One important factor that site owners should note is that Sitemaps will not boost a site’s rank within Google’s search listings.