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change and send information to search   Spammer Activity Affecting
        engines. As all activity on a website is   Millions Of Sites
        cataloged and categorized by spiders, any
        activity that is associated with a site drives it   Spammer activity on these submissions
        higher in search engine rankings. Simply put, a   is done with the intention to add links back
        sitemap is the ultimate way to make changes   to their own websites or to misguided and
        to a website and organize it in such a way that   false offers. All of this is done to attain higher
        your efforts are leveraged to produce more   rankings to those websites. All of these
        visibility in less time.             attempts to build backlinks are not legitimate
                                             SEO tactics, and they are considered poor
        Benefits of Sitemaps                 form by Google, as they are regarded as
                                             dishonest attempts to trick users and search
           Several advantages exist with building
                                             engines by misdirecting traffic.
        sitemaps for a website. Some of these
        benefits include:
                                               When these anonymous submissions were
                                             working correctly, Bing allowed website users
        �  Clear intention and themes to help
           maintain a site’s organizational integrity  to submit sitemaps anonymously through the
                                             use of an HTTP request. Now that activity
        �  Reduction of broken links, allowing for   is no longer supported, and Microsoft is
           problems to be fixed in a timely manner  eliminating the option to anonymously submit
                                             sitemaps.
        �  Clear channels for conversion--navigating
           sites is easier with more organized means   What now?
           of “click and go” technologies
                                               Those who still wish to submit sitemaps
        �  Activity is tracked and logged for greater   to Google have the option to use robots.txt
           visibility
                                             on a specific domain name or use Bing web
                                             tools to do so. Microsoft issued a statement
        �  Better visibility for new businesses trying
                                             shortly after the decision to pull HTTP request
           to create clear traffic channels
                                             options, stating,
        �  Time saving technology that leverages
           your efforts to yield better results  “We continue to recommend having
                                             sitemaps containing all relevant URLs
        �  Better communication among teams   hosted on your web sites and refreshing
           related to website development    those once per day. Trusted ways to inform
                                             search engines include Robots.txt and Bing
                                             webmaster tools.”
           Use of data revealed through sitemaps,
                                               Despite the inconvenience, millions of web
        such as coding errors, traffic origin, and
                                             designers are making the switch to the tighter
        strategic use of keywords will allow for
                                             protocol, as they see the clear advantages of
        improvement of content and drive additional
                                             driving spammer activity out of the picture.
        traffic to a website. A high quality website
                                             This small deviation in standard practice is
        is rarely built without the strategic use of
                                             unlikely to change the face of current web
        different teams who all work to define a
        central goal, action plan, and outcome.   business, and we look forward to seeing how
        Sitemaps serve as an effective central hub for   this will benefit web developers and business
        tracking a project, revealing what has been   owners in the coming months as they conduct
        completed, what needs improvement, and the   their integral practices with an added measure
        progress that is being made with each change.  of security.


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