Re: To Sitemap or not to Sitemap :-)

Hi Jean + Louise
Because it's thanksgiving time, I'll let you two in on a secret:

Sites D + E made it at the same time, at least we couldn't tell which
one got in first. It surprised us.

I'll do the usual full writeup soon (ha ha, putting pressure on myself
here :-)), but just some numbers now:

- D + E each had 4 URLs from different levels linked from outside (we
kinda overdid it, lol (*))

- those 4 URLs from BOTH sites were indexed and crawled (ie. listed
under the keyword in first / second place on the search results) within
**17 hours**. We thought twice daily would be enough, lol, afterwards
we went to hourly checks.

- D initially got indexed+crawled faster (up to 23 URLs within 9 days,
that droped to 13 a few days later), but E got **841** (Sitemaps!!!!!)
listed after **13 days** (D was down to 13). Site D got 784 URLs listed
after 16 days.

So, D and E would both be right (for the first index), however site E
(with sitemaps) was +/- fully indexed better and a bit faster.

So ... go out and get yerself links. ;-) But please, try for natural
ones..

Cheers,
John

PS and spend some time not wondering about your placements during the
short holiday :-)))

(*) both domains had a PR6 on the next PR update, LOL!!