XML Sitemaps have become the adopted standard for website definition on the internet. The XML Sitemaps standard began with Google as Google Sitemaps, and has transformed into an internet standard adopted by MSN and Yahoo. Now when you generate a sitemap for your site, if you follow a simple set of defined rules, it will be compatible with all three of the major search engines.

Sitemaps in and of themselves have become important webmaster tools. They provide a straight forward look at your site and the pages it contains. Instead of a search engine needing to crawl your site to index pages, it can be guided directly to all of the pages and content on your site. This guarantees that the search engines cover all of your pages, including those pages that usually aren't indexed or get missed.