The 3 big players in search Google, Yahoo! and MSN have agreed to accepting a single protocol for site submission. The Sitemaps system was originally devised by Google as a way for site owners to submit a URL feed of their site for inclusion in their index. This was particularly useful for dynamic sites which would otherwise be ignored by the engines. Yahoo! followed suit with their own version of the programme, but, this meant creating two different feeds and submitting them to each engine separately. So, todays announcement is very good news for webmasters and site owners, as they will be able to use a single feed and protocol for all the major engines. While Ask was not included in the discussion, it is hoped that the system will be adopted by all search engines.
This is great news for search engines, web masters and the all important user. For smaller search engines who may not have the capability to crawl dynamic content, this system can provide a way to increase their database. Users will have access to content that would otherwise be invisible. Many large non-commercial sites which have huge numbers or articles without the means to make their sites search engine friendly will have the opportunity to increase their readership.
For more information http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/11/joint-support-for-sitemap-protocol.html
