Who's To Blame For Faster Indexing? Google Sitemaps or FeedBurner

Jan 9, 2009 - 8:36 am 6 by

An SEOMoz post charts the positive impact having a Sitemap file can have on the speed of Google and Yahoo crawling and indexing your web pages.

The report seems pretty impressive and I myself feel that Sitemaps are important to have, for more sites. In fact, I recently added a Sitemap for this site, although, I really don't think it will help much with indexing this site any faster due to us being in Google News.

That being said, the Sphinn thread around this post has some quality discussion. I want to isolate one post from "IncrediBILL" who asks the question, is the Sitemap to credit for these sites getting indexed faster or is it FeedBurner?

Google acquired FeedBurner and FeedBurner is incredibly fast at picking up new content, specifically from WordPress blogs, which is what the study was done on. That being said, the report would have not shown an increase in speed to crawl if Sitemaps did not have anything to do with it. FeedBurner was a factor before the Sitemaps files were in place and they were a factor after the Sitemaps files were in place. So the only thing that really changed with this site (outside of Google changing variables, which they do often) is the Sitemaps addition.

So who would you credit for the faster indexing? Google's Sitemap protocol or FeedBurner? I'll poll it up:

Try not to use the "other" response. Yes, I know, I know.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 11, 2025

Jul 11, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Helpful Content Recoveries With Core Update, AI Mode Expands, Hidden Ad Terms & Fewer Ad Clicks

Jul 11, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

Google Local & Business Profiles Drops June 25th - Reporting Glitch?

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Tests Zoom Effect In On Images Within Search Results

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Search

Bing Search Image Box Tests Explore Image & Visual Search Buttons

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Microsoft Bing Tests Delivery Truck Icon In Search Ads

Jul 11, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: Report: Yahoo Site Explorer Updated Link Values