Forum Site Map vs General Sitemap

[Lonny]

Hello there

I own a web site:

www.site.com

and I have a forum


www.sitename.com/forum/


I generated a map via the VBSEO for the forum and submitted it to google and yahoo.

Now the question is this: can I submit more than 1 sitemap for 1 site and will googole still crawl the site itself other than crawling the forum?

I placed the validation page here

www.sitename.com/forum/googlevalidate.html

instead of the root - was it a smart move?

the site has many sections other than the forum so what should I do? create a sitemap for every section?

[Michael]

I'd recommend creating individual sitemaps for each section of your website and submitting them individually. Whilst also submitting a "master" sitemap which would just contain links to all your other section sitemaps too. Just reinforcing the hierachy of your website with Google this way.

[briansol]

Originally Posted by Michael

I'd recommend creating individual sitemaps for each section of your website and submitting them individually. Whilst also submitting a "master" sitemap which would just contain links to all your other section sitemaps too. Just reinforcing the hierachy of your website with Google this way.

I am under the impression that this is a bad idea.

You should only submit your master, which calls your subs. Otherwise, you end up giving google duplicate urls to scan.

[Michael]

Originally Posted by briansol

I am under the impression that this is a bad idea.

You should only submit your master, which calls your subs. Otherwise, you end up giving google duplicate urls to scan.

Everyone usually tends to have their own interpretation as to the best methods with regards to Google Sitemaps. At least where agreed upon the use of a master sitemap then