Re: Sitemaps - official Status?

There is only one issue I'm aware of, that is sporadically delayed
verifications for the stats pages. Here is the sitemaps blog with more
information and frequent announcements: http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/

<rant>
All the "I did everything the guidelines say and nothing has changed
for months" rants are not sitemap related. Those folks ask why their
pages don't appear in the search results. Here is why: just because a
Webmaster thinks a site is compliant to search engine guidelines, and
promoted properly, and established, that does not mean the site will
get indexed and ranked instantly. There are not that many Webmasters
reading these guidelines, and a minority of the crowd does indeed
understand them.

That is not because the guidelines are misleading, or too complicated:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
I find them pretty easy to understand, and very easy to follow.

The problem is that many Webmasters lack experience, follow bad advice
from message boards and questionable sources of SEO knowledge, and
don't listen when they hear something they don't like. Well, there are
tons of other reasons, especially lack of patience, and unrealistic
expectations.

You can't blame most site owners for "ignorance". Blogs and CMS
software have brought lots of technically challenged folks to the Web.
Why should a publisher or retailer wear a Webmaster hat, a Designer
hat, or even a SEO hat? I'd blame the software vendors selling crappy
products which produce cluttered and not indexable sites, and
scrupelous journalists and do-it-yourself sites telling the masses that
going to the Web where everything is free of charge will make them rich
quick without spending a dime. They have converted a lot of serious and
reasonable people to greedy freeloaders.

Running a Web site of any kind is not that different from other
businesses. You have to pay for
- a professional site architecture and design
- Web contents, (digital) goods, and services
- marketing, promotion, traffic, search engine optimization/marketing
- hosting and technical maintenance
and whatever else. The GIGO principle applies to the real world. You
won't get out much if you don't invest, for example in experienced
staff and/or consultancy, and traffic.
</rant>

Sebastian