Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Google Pages Site Sitemap

A little while ago, Charles wrote a post on Google Pages. It is a rather cool service. And here's a cooler fact: it automatically generates a sitemap for you, which you can use for indexing with Google Webmaster Tools or wherever else. If you frequently update, you could even use it as a feed of sorts.

The sitemap file is called, wait for it, sitemap.xml! It won't show up in your 'Uploaded stuff' though ( since you obviously didn't upload it! ) but you can find it at http://your.google.pages.sitename.googlepages.com/sitemap.xml. But here's the worrying part; so can others. It's a public file and you have no control over the contents either. All your files will be listed in it. So for those of you that use the Google Pages space for storage, if it's stuff you don't others to find, don't put it up there. There's even an iGoogle gadget that lets your browse the contents using the sitemap. But of course, you could argue that if it's online, someone could find a way to get it, but there's a difference between leaving your front door open and locking it, knowing that a determined thief could break in anyway.

Apart from sitemap.xml, there’s also an rss.xml. This one is also generated automatically but it contains entries of only your pages, not your uploaded files.

 I first found out about sitemap.xml and the iGoogle gadget from A Consuming Experience.