In my previous post I was already enthousiastic about my sitemap being pickup by Google within a couple of hours. I can now say that it gets better than that.
Much better, even.
I just noticed that it has been picked up again this morning sometime between 8 and 9 am. So it's my guess that the sitemap is downloaded by Google on a very frequent basis.
Or maybe it is because I submitted it twice. Anyhow, it is on the move.
I have been reading up on the Google Sitemaps over the past few week. A Google sitemap is an XML file with all the URL to all the pages of your website and you can add some extra data to it like: last update date, change frequency. In theory it should make Google crawl the site more efficiently. Although it is still in Beta I have decided to give a go.
To see if the Google Sitemaps offer some benefit I have devised a little test project. I have used a free tool to generate a sitemap and have added to that a URL to a page that is not linked to from any of my pages. On that page is a link to a further page that is not linked to.
If I can see that Google spiders these two loose pages then I know that there is some benefit from the Google Sitemaps.
I have uploaded the sitemap.xml on my site and have signaled Google around 7 pm last night. This morning I saw that the sitemap was downloaded by Google about one and a half, two hours later!
As an added bonus I got a list of pages that Google tried to crawl on my site but could no longer find. Yep, I had deleted those. So, I can now figure out what to do about that. Probably just ignore it. Read more about these handy sitemap statistics.
For now I am already seeing some interesting effects.
Can't wait to see more results.
The much anticipated magical day of September 13 arrived yesterday and we did not have a celebration or a brilliant fireworks display. No corks of Formula One size champagne bottles flying through the office and the contents ending down the neck of the management.
No, nothing like that.
Our project has not yet completed and we are still working on it. Getting close though, but still it is not clear if we have built all required functionality as no one dares to take the responsibility to speak on that. So it still a wait and see experience.
And we still struggle on.
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet I am now building my own network. At present there are not too many contacts yet, but hopefully this will grow.
The link above brings you to O'Reill Connection. Currently stating This is a beta launch of our new job-oriented social network.
on the homepage.
I know I should not predict anything about the future of new web applications, but still I think this is a new idea (to me at least) that presents a new way to make contact with people around the world sharing the same or complimentary skills. This can lead to job opportunities ("I've got the looks, you've got the brains, let's make lots of money") or a private group of experts whom one can ask specific questions. Again, all this is based on voluntary sharing of knowledge and resources. An Open Source type of networking.
I don't know if it will make me richer, wiser or happier or none of these, but I am giving it a try.
We have set sail together months ago. Seems closer to a lifetime. We knew that the deadline that was set would prove to be impossible to make. There was simply too much to do and explore. But still, we started off and went to our business with an unexpected eager and feel of honor.
So where does the journey leads us to?
Well, as members of the e-business department of an insurance company, we have been given the rewarding task of completely rebuilding the dated current version of the company website. A website that has grown in an natural process: adding bits and pieces every now and then and using better coding along the way. The site nowadays serves its purpose, but is almost impossible to maintain due to its lack of any structure.
So, after the decision was made that we need something new, the decision to build a new structure for the site was pretty obvious. We should also move from old ASP to the newer ASP.NET and we should therefore start working completely Object Oriented. And why not adapt to a new way of working in the same process? (The current "build it and then let me have a look and I will tell you what the functionality should be"-approach was a big PITA for the developers.)
And while we are changing everything, let's bring in a new Content Management System, which we are one of the first in our country to use the way we want it.
And let's all together change our hardware set up for production. We have grown bigger and we need load balancing and lot's of servers in different locations.
Hmmm, I have read a book about this.
We are doing everything wrong here:
The original deadline was a shot in the dark, not based on the work that had to be done. Someone said a date and others nodded and then it was the Holy Date from then on. And it is still hanging over us. Ready to drop. Soon it will.
Right now our department is decimated because of very long vacations (three or four weeks is normal). Still not all functionality has been defined. All the functional designers are out. (Who cares anyway?) Our architect is out for another two weeks. We are struggling to get our production environment up and running without processors hitting 80% all the time. Soon the new health insurance system will be all over us, before we have really solved all the problems we have now.
Meanwhile, management is not showing any panic (they must have had some very good training for that or are just still optimistic for no apparent reason).
And the Holy Date still stands.
Do we panic? No.
But for some stupid reason we care. I care. I try as an idiot to achieve my unachievable goals and get the stuff ready that has been assigned to me. Most of it self assigned. I try hard and find that it has influence on my private life. That is wrong, so wrong.
I have been down this road before and maybe I just should park my car and shout in the dark.
Aaaaargh!!
There is no crying over spilt milk under the bridge on a rainy day
