[thelist] Search engine help; crawl page

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

At 02:27 PM 06/09/2001, Ron Jourard responded:
Ben Henick wrote:
> > Links that might help:
> >
> > http://www.digital-web.com/tutorials/tutorial_2001-4.shtml

Ben, thanks for the plug. <smile>

> > http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/99/31/index1a.html
>
>- the second article was updated last week:
>http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/23/index1a.html

Good article and I was glad to see his update, too. Well done.

>My question is: on a small site (circa 100 pages) does a crawl page
>achieve anything more than a site map that is linked to the home page
>and includes links to all the pages on the site?
>
>Ron Jourard
>Toronto
>www.defencelaw.com

Ron,

Regarding your question, I haven't use crawl pages myself so I can't speak 
from direct experience on that. I know Wired news does, though, quite 
understandably with the size of their site and archiving needs. The Wired 
news site is noted in the updated Webmonkey article, too (which is also a 
good article. Mine and his cover some of the same stuff but also different 
things, too).

If you do a sitemap, the ideal is to have it be a direct link from the main 
page. Sitemaps are great for search engines AND for visitors, where crawl 
pages are really just intended for search engines. I recommend sitemaps to 
my clients when their sites are more than around hmmm....  10-15 pages, 
link into more than 1 more level kind of thing.... but it really depends on 
the site. I evaluate that for each site, so there's no carved in stone rule 
here.

I <bold>generally</bold> recommend a text sitemap with links to as many 
pages on your site as possible. Visitors can also use it. (keywords here - 
'typical' and 'generally' -- as always, each site needs to be evaluated for 
what's best based on that particular site.

That's tougher to do with larger sites, especially like Wired news; 
however, I do know there are programs out there that will generate the 
sitemaps, such as Powermapper.

HTH.

Warmly,
Shirley

-- 
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser at skdesigns.com
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