WebProNews

Webmasters can face a number of issues, and may hope that sitemaps can cure the bulk of them. 

So a panel at SES Chicago weighed sitemaps’ pros and cons.

SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to bring you reports and videos from the Windy City.  Enjoy our coverage this week.

To start things off, Searching for Profit’s Amanda Watlington stated that there are too many people who believe creating a sitemap will solve all their indexing problems.  No one exactly leaped up to contradict her.

Instead, Vivek Pathak of Ask.com stressed that sitemaps do not act as reverse links. 

They may improve crawl efficiency and completeness, but thus far have been used more by low-quality sites than anything else.

Jeremy Clem believes in submitting sitemaps anyway, though. 

Clem, who works at DoubleClick Performics, has also seen improved crawl frequency and indexation, and said that sitemaps allow webmasters to get a more intelligent crawl and lead to increased tracking and reporting.

Google’s Trevor Foucher continued the conversation by saying that “it’s a complicated answer” on the subject of whether or not sitemaps will help someone rank better. 

But he agreed that they can help get sites noticed, and pointed out that they will definitely not hurt anything.

Finally, Danny Sullivan, the session’s moderator, asked, “When will we get to trusted sitemaps?” 

Sitemaps are, after all, heavily used by spammers.

Google’s Foucher answered, “That sounds like a difficult thing to do.  But it would be nice.”

WebProNews Internet reporter/anchor Kara Ratliff contributed to this article.