New Google Sitemaps Features

Google has recently added new features to its Sitemaps service. In addition to a revamped interface, there's a new verification method, a new summary page that provides a quick snapshot about the state of your site in the Google index, and a notification of violation of Google's webmaster guidelines with a request for reinclusion (not yet available for all sites).

The new verification method allows you to insert a meta tag in your home page. Previously, you had to set up an empty file in your site's root directory with a filename provided by Google. This wasn't always possible for site owners.

A new Summary page provides a quick snapshot of the state of your site, as seen by Google. Available on the Summary page are the date that your site was last accessed by Googlebot, pages on your site that are only partially indexed, and various types of errors encountered by Googlebot while crawling your site:



Not yet visible for all sites is a "Notification of violations of the webmaster guidelines" section on the summary page:



which includes a "reinclusion request" link. If you have a violation that may have caused a drop in rankings or a complete exclusion from the index, you can fix the problem and then request that Google reinclude your pages using this link.