This weeks poll asks a simple question - Do you use a sitemap for your blog?
WordPress users are (as usual) best served in this regard, but Blogger and other platforms can make use of them as well.
I recently started a new blog, and due to one of my first steps being the generation of a sitemap, the blog and all 10 posts were indexed and available to Google Search in less than 48 hours after I installed Wordpress. I have read of some bloggers not being indexed by Google weeks after starting, so it’s an indication of their usefulness.
As ever, please expand your choices in the comments, I’ve only been blogging just over 3 months myself, and probably learn more from you guys, than you do from me 
Thanks for visiting, I really appreciate it.
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13 users commented in " The Sunday Poll - Do You Use A Sitemap? "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhy yes, I DO use a sitemap for my blog!
Some ‘ruggedly handsome’ blogger from Scotland helped me out in this regard.
Although the ruggedly handsome part is open to opinion, according to Claire!
Well, I wanted to answer the poll, but their server is timing out. I’ll have to return to do it. I installed the sitemap plugin and watched my indexes get faster — getting indexed within 24 hours.
I currently use Wordpress on my blog and have not employed any plugin for Wordpress but still Google Bot visits my site everyday . Do you think i should install a plugin for Sitemap .
Hi Madhur, yes I would definitely use the Sitemaps plugin if you like Google traffic. Sure, Google will find you eventually, but as RT says, the plugin makes it almost instant - the fastest a post of mine made it into Google was about 3 hours!
Everyone has server probs at the moment RT, the internet’s getting overloaded
I’m having words with that Claire, Kai…..
What would be useful would be a tutorial on how exactly to create a sitemap. I know there are benefits but a in-depth post about how to do it would be really useful!
Matt @ Affiliate Programs
That’s a yep from me, Chris.
I installed a google sitemap plug-in for my wordpress blog - got confused by it all and haven’t bothered since. I have got a few hits via google so I assume its fine without
The Sitemaps plugin makes it SO easy to send Google and Yahoo sitemaps. I definitely suggest setting it up with Yahoo as well, I did and got indexed almost immediately.
BTW - I saw your links are going up quick in Technorati, nice job!
Like this one Matt?
Or for non-Blogger users this one.
If you left it working Kevin, it’ll be taking care of business itself. There’s no question you’ll get indexed by Google (eventually) without one, but if speed counts, you need one.
Cheers David!
Thanks Anita - A lot of them are due to the ‘Z list‘ but I’m not complaining
CoffeeCup Software makes a dandy and inexpensive app called Google SiteMapper that we use over on 2Dolphins and it works like a charm. It generates both a sitemap.xml file for Google and also a sitemap.html page to help with navigation on your site.
(Disclaimer - I’m not affiliated with CoffeeCup in any way.)
Well yes..THANK GOODNESS for plugins..I couldn’t figure it out before!
Hey Chris! I too use a site index in the form of my archives page.
I did have a separate sitemap page, but coded the archives page differently so that I could condense the two..
From everything I’ve read (and yes, i too am very new to blogging - only a couple months for me as well)it seems as though a sitemap is quite important, as you have pointed out.
Another great and useful post.
Thanks Ryan
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