Thursday, 23 November 2006

Google Revamps News Indexing Tools

Google has created tools to control how the search engine indexes developers content for inclusion in the Google News portal. Publishers of English-language news sites indexed by Google News will be able to include them in Google's Webmaster...

Google has created tools to control how the search engine indexes developers content for inclusion in the Google News portal. Publishers of English-language news sites indexed by Google News will be able to include them in Google's Webmaster Tools service. In other words, the site map will enable publishers to specify the articles they want Google News to index.

A site map is a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organised in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site.

Site maps can improve search engine optimisation of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses Macromedia Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

Site maps do have limitations. Most search engines will only follow a finite number of links from a page, so if a site is very large, additional strategies besides the site map may be required so that search engines and visitors can access all content on the site.

While some developers argue that site index is a more appropriately used term to relay page function, web visitors are used to seeing each term and generally associate both as one and the same.

Web site owners will also be able to see a list of their latest articles featured on Google News, as well as a list of indexing errors made by the automated Google crawler, so that the problems can be addressed.

Before launching the new site map tools, the company tested them with several news organisations, said Nathan Stoll, Google News product manager. Stoll said publishers had asked for more 'transparency and control' of what content is indexed specifically by Google News.