Google have added another level of verification into their sitemap program. For those who have not been introduced to Google Sitemaps, it is an almost instant way to ensure that all the pages of your website are listed by Google. The onus is on the developer to keep the sitemap up to date and hence keep their Google listings up to date.

The extra level of verification means adding an empty text file with a unique identifying URL to your site in the same directory as your sitemap. Google then checks to see that the sitemap and verification file are there so that they can trust the person adding or removing sitemaps through their interface actually has server access and is permitted to make these alterations.
I can only imagine that this has come about through abuse of the system, perhaps with people registering their competitors sitemaps as their own then deleting them.

The good news is that if it’s all getting too complicated, Netpromote can do the whole thing for you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 15th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.