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Since the launch of Google Sitemaps, search engine gurus far and wide have weighed in with their thoughts about Google's "inclusion" program.

One such pundit, Yahoo employee Jeremy Zawodny, wondered aloud about the back-end workings of Google Sitemaps because he was curious as to why Google did not implement a ping-based protocol that would accept page updates, instead of the XML format Google provides. Blogs interface with some blog search engines by using this method.

Jeremy also questions why Google would re-invent the wheel whens there is already an effective update service in place. He also wondered why Danny Sullivan didn't ask Google about using a ping-based system for Google Sitemaps, to which Danny felt prudent issuing a response of his own.

In Danny's write-up, he explains that he did in fact ask why Google didn't use one of the feed systems that were already in place. Google's response was, as expected, non-committal or off the record.

From here, Danny offered some of his thoughts about Google's fledgling program, saying Google Sitemaps is a new service that will undergo a great deal of evolution before the final product is released. Danny also stated he would love to see Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask make suggestions to Google about how to improve this program, and since the XML-based service is driven by an open-source Python file, user-suggested improvements for Sitemaps are quite possible to implement.

Danny also explained why he thought a ping-based feed service may not be as efficient as some hope. "(Y)ou've got some site owners and marketers who will be more than happy to ping you every day, if they think convincing you that they are fresh will boost a ranking. They aren't fresh, but they'll ping, ping, ping away," says Sullivan. "It's also not necessarily the best case to be in a ping-and-retrieve situation. It's a waste of bandwidth, for one. If you trust me, far better I feed you the actual page content for inclusion."

Because the current edition of Google Sitemaps is not the final product, there's no telling on what improvements or alterations Google will make to the program. Also, it is important to remember that Google developed the back-end portion of the sitemaps service in an open-source format. By definition, this designation allows for user-induced change to occur.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.