RE: Google Sitemaps: Yet another "RSS" or site-metadata format and Atom "competitor"

["Bob Wyman" <bob@xxxxxxxx>]

Robert Sayre wrote:
> it's pretty much the same dictionary or a-list situation we're
> used to. Like rel=nofollow, this seems geared towards speeding up
> the crawl, with a bunch of rhetoric surrounding it. Maybe I'm just
> cynical.
	Why would you have to be cynical to suggest that support for
Sitemaps would speed up the crawl for Google? Wouldn't that be a good thing
for everyone involved? 
	* Google benefits by being able to do things more efficiently. 
	* Google users get timelier and more complete results. 
	* Publishers get their data "visible" more quickly than before.
	This seems like a win-win for everyone! There's no need for cynicism
to see the benefits. Heck, these are all the same benefits that have
motivated at least some of us to invest heavily in Atom and other
syndication formats.
	I think it would be really wonderful if we were to find that
non-blog web sites start producing this data. My only regret is that Google
has confused matters by publishing this new format to muddy the waters...
It's time that the rest of the web got the same kind of excellent service
that we've been providing to blogs.
	My hope is, however, that we'll be able to convince non-blog web
sites to use Atom instead of the Google proprietary format when publishing
this data. Using Atom would mean that a large number of existing systems
would be able to process their data rather than just Google. Also, by using
Atom, people will be able to go beyond merely listing URLs and will be able
to include summary data and other bits of metadata that other applications
can exploit. This could be a good thing for Atom -- if we can convince
people to use it instead of the Google proprietary format. If we don't
convince folk to use Atom, then we're going to find that Sitemaps provides a
"good enough" solution and it will be very hard to convince people to
convert to the more expressive Atom format in the future.

	bob wyman