It would be useful if ikiwiki was able to create [google sitemap][1] files to allow easy indexing. 

[1]: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html

> Sitemaps are particularly beneficial when users can't reach all areas of a
> website through a browseable interface. (Generally, this is when users are
> unable to reach certain pages or regions of a site by following links). For
> example, any site where certain pages are only accessible via a search form
> would benefit from creating a Sitemap and submitting it to search engines.

What I don't get is exactly how ikiwiki, as a static wiki that's quite
deeply hyperlinked, benefits from a sitemap. The orphans plugin can
produce a map of pages that other pages do not link to, if you're worried
about having such pages not found by web spiders.

--[[Joey]]

While pages are very interlinked, most people use ikiwiki for blogging. Blogging produces pages at random intervals and google apparently optimizes their crawls to fit the frequency of changes. For me it's not so often that the contents of my blog changes, so google indexes it quite infrequently. Sitemaps are polled more often than other content (if one exists) so it's lighter for the site and for search engines (yes, google) to frequently poll it instead. So it's not that pages can't be found, but it's lighter for the site to keep an up to date index.

-- Sami

> I've written a sitemaps plugin for my own use.  With a little tweaking it
> should be usable for others.  See [my git
repo](http://localhost/git/?p=website.git;a=blob;f=plugins/googlesitemap.pm)
for an example.  You will probably need to strip out the metadata variables I
> gather, and tweak to generate proper priorities.  The code is pretty simple
> though and self-explanatory.
>
> -- CharlesMauch

>> presumably you really mean [xtermin.us rather than localhost](http://xtermin.us/git/?p=website.git;a=blob;f=plugins/googlesitemap.pm)
>> -- [[KarlMW]]

>>>[xtermin.us rather than localhost](http://xtermin.us/git/?p=website.git;a=blob;f=plugins/googlesitemap.pm) is 404 now.
>>> -- weakish


According to [Google Webmaster tools](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/), my site isn't indexed for weeks at a time. Since I [blog](http://webconverger.org/blog/) every couple of days, that doesn't work. Yes I do have pingurl configured which [Google reader](http://reader.google.com/) does pick up quickly, but **not** the general search results from Google.

There is a [sitemap XML standard](http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php) that ikiwiki needs to generate for. 

Update: I've since discovered under [Google Webmaster tools 'Subscriber stats'](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/subscriberstats), you can tell Google to treat a feed as a sitemap. Therefore in many cases just submitting your [[ikiwiki/blog/]]'s feed will be enough for Google to start better indexing your ikiwiki site. **Update:** Sorry this is bollocks. Google doesn't grok a feed as a sitemap. You'll get a ERROR:

	We were unable to read your Sitemap. It may contain an entry we are unable to recognize. Please validate your Sitemap before resubmitting.

[Google should grok feeds as sitemaps.](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34654) Or rather [[plugins/inline]] should be improved to support the [sitemap protocol](http://sitemaps.org/protocol.php) natively.