asp:menu and search engine visibility

[John Dann]

Newbie question: I'm guessing that using asp:menu in an aspx 2.0 web
form doesn't allow search engines to index pages via the menu tree.

Please can anyone confirm this? Assuming this is correct then what are
the suggested ways if improving search engine visibility? I was
wondering for example whether there's any simple way of converting a
web.sitemap file to a text file of hyperlinks. (Again I'm assuming
that web.sitemap isn't enough on its own to guide the indexing
process.)

JGD

[Peter Bromberg [C# MVP]]

John,
First of all, let's not confuse web.sitemap which is solely for the use of
the control, with a "google sitemap" which is an xml document that google's
crawler will use to index your site. They are two completely different things.

In general, search engine crawlers do nothing but follow hyperlinks.
However, they "prefer" generic links that point directly to a resource, such
as "http://mysite/myfolder/mypage.aspx" They will follow multiple links with
the same page but different querystring items, but "only up to a point".

Your best bet is to supply a list of "generic" hyperlinks to everything in
your menu, say, at the very bottom of the page. You can also create a
separate google sitemap.
Peter

--
Co-founder, Eggheadcafe.com developer portal:
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
UnBlog:
http://petesbloggerama.blogspot.com


"John Dann" wrote:

Newbie question: I'm guessing that using asp:menu in an aspx 2.0 web
form doesn't allow search engines to index pages via the menu tree.

Please can anyone confirm this? Assuming this is correct then what are
the suggested ways if improving search engine visibility? I was
wondering for example whether there's any simple way of converting a
web.sitemap file to a text file of hyperlinks. (Again I'm assuming
that web.sitemap isn't enough on its own to guide the indexing
process.)

JGD

[John Dann]

On Sun, 6 Aug 2006 11:26:01 -0700, Peter Bromberg [C# MVP]
<pb*******@yahoo.nospammin.comwrote:

>First of all, let's not confuse web.sitemap which is solely for the use of
the control, with a "google sitemap" which is an xml document that google's
crawler will use to index your site. They are two completely different things.

In general, search engine crawlers do nothing but follow hyperlinks.
However, they "prefer" generic links that point directly to a resource, such
as "http://mysite/myfolder/mypage.aspx" They will follow multiple links with
the same page but different querystring items, but "only up to a point".

Your best bet is to supply a list of "generic" hyperlinks to everything in
your menu, say, at the very bottom of the page. You can also create a
separate google sitemap.

Thanks. Is there any utility available that can accept an aspx
web.sitemap file (which I already have) as an input and then output a
file in Google sitemap format? I imagine that this should be fairly
straightforward but don't want to reinvent the wheel.

JGD

[Peter Bromberg [C# MVP]]

A google sitemap is an extrreeeeemly simple xml document:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84">
<url>
<loc>http://www.yoursite.com/yourappname/default.aspx?id=2</loc>
<lastmod>2006-08-05</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.08</priority>
</url>
(more url nodes, then... the closing:
</urlset>

Methinks one could do this in a text editor even with little or no knowledge
of xml,
by just taking the menu sitemap and doing some strategic Search and replace.
Cheers,
Peter

--
Co-founder, Eggheadcafe.com developer portal:
http://www.eggheadcafe.com
UnBlog:
http://petesbloggerama.blogspot.com


"John Dann" wrote:

On Sun, 6 Aug 2006 11:26:01 -0700, Peter Bromberg [C# MVP]
<pb*******@yahoo.nospammin.comwrote:

First of all, let's not confuse web.sitemap which is solely for the use of
the control, with a "google sitemap" which is an xml document that google's
crawler will use to index your site. They are two completely different things.

In general, search engine crawlers do nothing but follow hyperlinks.
However, they "prefer" generic links that point directly to a resource, such
as "http://mysite/myfolder/mypage.aspx" They will follow multiple links with
the same page but different querystring items, but "only up to a point".

Your best bet is to supply a list of "generic" hyperlinks to everything in
your menu, say, at the very bottom of the page. You can also create a
separate google sitemap.

Thanks. Is there any utility available that can accept an aspx
web.sitemap file (which I already have) as an input and then output a
file in Google sitemap format? I imagine that this should be fairly
straightforward but don't want to reinvent the wheel.

JGD