Okay, I'm a little bit of a novice to google sitemaps and could do with a little help.

Firstly, do they actually help get all of your site pages listed ? I already have a site up and running which pretty much has most pages listed, so does submitting a site map benefit me any?

Also, I've noticed there's an option to set a priority number to each page.Hmmm, what if I leave this blank or set all to the number 1? Is there some form of mathematcial science that I should be using here (although maths was never my best subject !)

I guess what I would like to find out is if the map really does add benefit and what I should becareful to do and what not to do?

THANKS

if you are already fully included, i'm not sure what the benefit would be as it is a function related to inclusion and doesw not impacting rankings. I don't think it will hurt, and perhaps not a bad idea as a bit of added insurance that your site will continue to be added. Of course you will continue to be included without sitemaps, but if googlebot does run into difficulty indexing your site then you would receive reporting of that via sitemaps. That would be a small benefit - see this thread for an example scenario of how the sitemaps info can be important outside of inclusion alone but instead googlebot reporting.

[ Message was edited by: Logan 11/10/2006 06:59 am ]

Thanks for that.

And do you have any advice for setting a priority number on the page? Maybe it's just the sitemap builder program that I have, but its asks if I want to set a number priority from 0.1 to 1 for each page on the site.

I have the option to leave undefined.

Have you come across this before?