Google SiteMaps Are Good For You

Recent enhancements to Google's SiteMaps tool are a boon to seo webmasters.

I had previously questioned the value of creating Google SiteMaps because it did not make a measurable difference in search results - but the true value is appearing as something different than expected:

Matt Cutts just made a post that mentioned enhancements to sitemaps diagnostics that made me quiver. I quickly validated my site with the service and found it reveals fascinating information about your site:

• What crawl errors were found
• URL's that timed out
• unassigned pagerank pages
• top words in your site
• top words in links to your site
• and very interestingly - top queries that returned your site in the top results

This last point showed me that my web site showed up on the second page of an important query that I wasn't even tracking yet. This is clearly going to be one of the growing arsenal of tools for Internet marketers.

Kudos for Google for being so democratic in their sharing of information.