Google Introduces Sitemaps - Why is Google Doing This?

For once, the answer to the question of why Google is doing this seems pretty obvious. According to its own corporate information, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Google Sitemaps is a direct extension of that mission; it makes it easier for webmasters to submit, and for Google to find, fresh information on websites.

But why is Google sharing the technology? Shivakumar stated in his blog that it was “so that other search engines can do a better job as well. Eventually we hope this will be supported natively in webservers (e.g. Apache, Lotus Notes, IIS).” While Google’s culture is such that I can believe it values open source, and would even be glad to see other search engines doing a better job, I think the key is getting native support on Web servers. It is well known that Apache is the most popular Web server on the Internet –- and Apache is open source. If Google truly wants to see usage of Google Sitemaps spread far and wide, sharing the technology like this is the fastest way to do it.

The easier it is to use Google Sitemaps, the more likely it is that webmasters will use it. Getting native support on popular Web servers would make Google Sitemaps easier to use. As more websites use Google Sitemaps, it will make Google’s job easier, too. As the project continues to develop, and eventually works it way out of beta, it should significantly shorten the amount of time webmasters and site owners must wait before new content is indexed –- and that should be easier on everybody’s nerves.