Now there is already a flood of these generators popping up! Different ways of generating your XML powered sitemap file. More are probably appearing as you read this. For your convenience, three ways to generate your XML Sitemaps file are listed below:

Difficult - Google's Python Generator

That's a relative term, if you know your server like back of your hand and installing scripts doesn't scare bejesus out of you, you're probably smiling at word difficult. Google supplies a link to a generator which you can download and set up on your server. It will cough up your sitemap XML file and automatically feed it to Google. Google XML Generator

In order for this Generator to work, Python version 2.2 must be installed on your web server - many servers don't have this. If you know what you're doing, this will probably be a good choice.

You don't need a Google Account to use Sitemaps but it's encouraged because you can track your sitemap's progress and view diagnostic information. If you already have another Google Account gmail, Google Alerts, etc. just use that one to sign in and follow directions from there.

To submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request, issue your request to following URL:

www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Hard - A PHP Code Generator

This is a php generator that you can place on your server. This generator will spider your site, and produce your XML sitemap file. Download phpSitemapNG and upload it your server. Run generator to get your XML sitemap file and send it to Google. PHP Generator

Again, this is only hard to do if you don't know your way around PHP files or scripts.

Easy - Free Online Generator

These Generators are popping up everywhere, and Google now keeps a list of these 'third party suppliers' of generators on their site. Find them here: Google's List of Third Party Generators

One of easiest to use is www.xm-sitemaps.com, and you can index up to 500 pages with this online Generator very quickly and it will give you sitemap XML file Google needs to index your site. It will go into your site, spider it and index all your pages into an XML sitemap of your site. You can download this file, Compressed or Non- compressed and make minor changes such as setting priority, changing frequency, etc.

Then upload this file to your site as sitemap.xml to root directory of your server i.e. where you have your homepage. Then notify Google Sitemaps of your XML file and you're in business.

Of course, only drawback, if you constantly add pages to your site you will need to also add these pages to your XML sitemap file. This won't be much of a problem unless you're daily adding pages to your site - then you will need something like PHP or Python generator to do all this for you automatically.

Google is still major search engine on web so getting your pages indexed and updated quickly is major reason to use Google Sitemaps. If you want your site to remain competitive it's probably wisest route to take.

---- To learn more about different Services and Programs offered by Google click here: Google Adsense & Google Adwords Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of www.bizwaremagic.com This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached. ----

There are however several Free Third Party scripts and tools available.

1)Softplus GSiteCrawler: This is a windows software and is extremely easy to use.It has been coded in Visual Basic 6.0.

http://johannesmueller.com/gs/

2)SiteMaps Pal: This is a online service that generates sitemap for you.It has a limit of 1000 links. So if you web site has more than 1000 links, this won't work for you.

http://www.sitemapspal.com/

3)Google Sitemap Generator: This is another free online sitemap creator.This service lets you crawl sites 3 levels deep and limits number of links to 400.

http://www.my-google-sitemap.com/

4)phpSitemapNG from enarion: This is a php script that you need to upload to root of your web site and script generates sitemap file on server.

It also lets you submit sitemap to Google by clicking a link.

The drawback of this script is that you will need to upload it to each of your sites and it also doesn't recognize subdomains.

http://enarion.net/google/

5)Google Sitemap Generator for Dreamweaver: This dreamweaver extension by George Petrov lets you quickly create Google Sitemaps for your dreamweaver sites.

http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=10538

6)Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress: Here is a plugin for wordpress users

http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2005/06/05/google-sitemaps-generator- v2-final

7)SecretSpider generator: This is a paid software priced at $97. Its advantages are that it also lets you gzip xml file thereby making it smaller in size.

http://novasoft.secretspid.hop.clickbank.net/

So, go ahead and make your website more Google-friendly.