WebProNews

Federal agencies may have the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) helping guide their efforts to make web information more accessible to search engines. A Senate Committee reviewing the E-Government Act of 2002 may end up recommending the Sitemap Protocol to federal agencies. Improving the availability of online government information means making it more available to the place where people tend to look for it: search engines.

The Google Public Policy blog noted the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will consider S. 2321, a Reauthorization of the E-Government Act. This extension will have OMB draw up guidance and best practices for agencies to enable search crawlers to index their websites effectively.

Google recommended Sitemaps as an easy way for agencies to comply with the Act's requirements. The search company has helped several federal and state agencies, and the Library of Congress, implement Sitemaps for improving the site's search visibility.

Website architecture at government sites could be hindering people from finding the information they need, in Google's view. Google estimates about half of government websites suffer from these architecture issues, and Sitemaps can help alleviate the problem.