Few more google questions

#1 So google doesnt get mad at us for bugging them every night (auto-notify = on ) about our sitemaps? I guess they have a system in place where they can tell the newer files from the old ones.

#2 Do the google bots stop visiting our sites directly once we submit our Sitemaps every night.. Or should we make a robots.txt file? Im not even sure if its a bad thing for them to view both versions. But im guessing they can slow our sites down by visiting both versions. Maybe one is enough.

#3 I submitted my sitemap last night...and I see that Google checked it out a few hours later. Now that I know they checked out my thousands of new pages...is there a timeframe I could look forward to, to see them show up in their search engine? Their all pretty much new pages.

mike

1. It's not a problem. Google downloads my sitemaps at least twice a day anyway.

2. Not sure what you mean by "both versions". The sitemap only contains a list of URLs. The spiders will then go to each of those URLs to index content.

3. It could be hours, days, or months. No way to tell with the way Google works.

Originally Posted by mikeinjersey

#1 So google doesnt get mad at us for bugging them every night (auto-notify = on ) about our sitemaps? I guess they have a system in place where they can tell the newer files from the old ones.

Yes, they do. You're fine.

Originally Posted by mikeinjersey

#2 Do the google bots stop visiting our sites directly once we submit our Sitemaps every night.. Or should we make a robots.txt file? Im not even sure if its a bad thing for them to view both versions. But im guessing they can slow our sites down by visiting both versions. Maybe one is enough.

Sounds like you're a little confused. The sitemap is just a list of your url's. They still need to send their spider to see what's on each of those urls. The sitemap helps Google make sure they find all the pages on your site that you want them to find.

The robots.txt file is really the opposite. Robots.txt tells Google to NOT spider certain pages on your site.

Sitemap says "Include these pages." Robots.txt says "Exclude these pages."

Originally Posted by mikeinjersey

#3 I submitted my sitemap last night...and I see that Google checked it out a few hours later. Now that I know they checked out my thousands of new pages...is there a timeframe I could look forward to, to see them show up in their search engine? Their all pretty much new pages.

mike

Once you submit your sitemap, Google 1st grabs the sitemap. They still have to come spider your pages. It took them about 14 days from when I originally submitted my sitemap to when they spidered my site well. And it took about 4.5 months for them to send me a decent amount of traffic. So it all takes time.

Good luck,
Ross

thx much on the details, rmjvol.

If I run the sitemap generator, does that automatically submit it to google? I dont have to do anything else? Thanks

It pings Google automatically (if you have corresponding option enabled), but it's still suggested to submit sitemaps to google webmaster account to track status/make sure there are no parse errors etc.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/siteoverview

If all your threads are 2 clicks from the home page do you still need a sitemap? What other benefits does it have?