Google and Yahoo! Working Together On Better Web Indexing

Karzz1 writes "In an exclusive video interview with WebProNews, Yahoo and Google announced a collaborative site called sitemaps.org. Yahoo!'s Tim Mayer states in the video, 'This is something we are announcing tonight at around 9 PM tonight (Las Vegas) Google and Yahoo have gotten together to provide webmasters and publishers a unified way to send their content... let our search engines know about new and existing content.'"

Comments

What About Microsoft?

[eldavojohn]

Well, I went to the sitemaps.org site & looked around for the people owning/running/maintaining the page. In the TOS, I found it to start with:

Terms of service

This is a contract between you and each of the sponsors of Sitemaps.org: Google, Inc., Yahoo, Inc., and Microsoft Corporation (referred to collectively in this agreement as the "Sponsors," "we," or "us"). By using the Sitemaps.org website (the "Website") you agree to be bound by the following terms and conditions (the "Terms of Service").

Scope of Terms of Services; License

These Terms of Service govern your use of the Website. The Sponsors' copyrights in the sitemaps protocol specification, as published on the Website (the "Specification"), are licensed to you under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (version 2.5). Other than the Sponsors' copyrights in this Specification, no intellectual property rights of any kind are granted or may arise under these Terms of Service, whether express, implied or otherwise.

So as you can see, Microsoft is also involved in a project under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (version 2.5). Which is in and of itself something newsworthy in my opinion--since they're so often played as the bad guy on Slashdot. Frankly, the article states:

"The quality of your index is predicated by the quality of your sources and Windows Live Search is happy to be working with Google and Yahoo! on Sitemaps to not only help webmasters, but also help consumers by delivering more relevant search results so they can find what they're looking for faster," said Ken Moss, General Manager of Windows Live Search at Microsoft.

So why is Microsoft omitted from the summary & title of this news? Surely their Windows Live Search is contributing just as much as Yahoo!'s search or Google's search engine.

I'm confused--when Microsoft does something good, do we just ignore it? You know, I'm all for criticizing their evil plans for world domination in the software market but shouldn't news be subjective not objective even if it is only for nerds?

Side note, I'll bet this post hits rock bottom like any other post that says something positive about Microsoft.

Re:What About Microsoft?

[_Sprocket_]

Side note, I'll bet this post hits rock bottom like any other post that says something positive about Microsoft

Sometimes I get this petty little feeling that there should be a "-1, Martyr Complex" mod option. But of course, this only feeds said complex. And that's the problem with a lot of moderations - sometimes its more effective responding with why an opinion might be missing something.

Having said that - responding is also only so effective. The linked example works well to demonstrate it. In the responses this down-modded post got, someone took the time to point out to you that "free" was not an issue of cost. Your entire post was derailed. Now you moan and groan about the injustices visited upon you due to anti-Microsoft sentiment. You're either refusing to listen, are slow on the pick-up, or are intentionally trolling.

Back on point...

Sure - there's a fair amount of anti-Microsoft sentiment here. I like it. You'll have to excuse me if I don't gush about Microsoft's latest venture like so much of the rest of the industry. But I will agree that we must be guarded to ensure we don't allow ourselves to get too carried away.

Next time - have the conviction in your opinion to state it without the cheap mod / martyrdom ploy.

Subjective...

[scombs]

Example Code from: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9 ">
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</urlset>

Is it just me, or does the priority tag seem really objective and arbitrary? One webmaster's .5 could be another's .8...

Re:Subjective...

[Jeff Molby]

In other words, assigning a priority of 1 to all your pages will not affect their ranking vs. *other* sites that appear in the search results

Are you sure?

If two pages from different site are determined to be of approximately equal relevance to the search, couldn't a search engine pick a favorite by using the internal priority ranking?

Wouldn't a page on widgets be more relevant coming from a widget-maker (who would give it a higer internal priority than his gadget pages) than a similar page coming from a gadget-maker (who would give it a lower internal priority than his gadget pages)?

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. It would probably yield better search results. But if things do go that way, I bet you'll find that content makers will quickly abandon the use of internal priorities.

Text Browsers

[poindextrose]

It's too bad that the specification only covers information relevant to search engines.

How about a <description> tag? I would take great interest in a sitemap specification that gives me enough information to navigate major parts of a site with a viewer plugin (of some sort) in a web browser.

There's nothing worse than fumbling around navigating page after page when the web server is slow, the pages are image- or ad-heavy, or the navigation on the page just plain sucks.

How do I submit a sitemap to Yahoo/Microsoft?

[lanfor]

So how can I submit my sitemap to Yahoo! and Microsoft/search.live.com? FAQ says something about sending a HTTP request to /ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.y oursite.com%2Fsitemap.xml, but it doesn't say what are searchengine-specific urls to use.

Lukasz
Hikipedia - free database of hiking trails