evilgreenmonkey

It is often noted that there is currently an on/off switch for websites perceived as spam, with little grey area or notification. This could soon change however, with an added feature being tested for the users of Google Sitemaps. To recap, Google Sitemaps is not the same as a HTML written web page sitemap which many sites use like a book index or navigation page for visitors. Google’s Sitemaps service uses a language called XML in order to help Googlebot (the crawler that indexes your site) find every web page which you have published. This is particularly helpful for dynamic pages which are sometimes ignored by Googlebot, or content which is hidden behind an online form or search facility.

If a website using Sitemaps is judged by Google as purposely misleading the search engine, the same penalties or blacklisting as normal will occur without notification. On the other hand, if “Black Hat” SEO techniques are found on the site - but thought of as non-beneficial or accidental, an alert could be displayed to warn the website owner via the Sitemaps control panel. Matt Cutts (a Senior Engineer at Google) explains in a recent article that the service is still experimental and should not be used as a benchmark of whether a website is spam or legitimate.

Although this is an impressive leap forward by Google in order to repair their “Don’t Be Evil” reputation, I personally wonder how this will help the small businesses which are the ones mainly effected by such issues. A large blue-chip company will hire an SEO consultancy or an in-house team in order to look after their interests, so they shouldn’t accidentally encounter Black Hat implementations or get penalised as a result. A small enterprise such as the English Hotel featured as an example by Cutts would certainly benefit, although how many of these types of business will either know what Google Sitemaps is, or actively manage and check their Google Sitemaps control panel? I put forward that such SMEs will need a Search Engine Optimiser to look after their Google Sitemaps and should therefore be made aware by the consultant of the issues faced on the site in the first place. All we can hope is that the webmasters of such sites become more familiar with the tools available to them, although a technical knowledge barrier will always exist at some level.