It appears that the top 3 rival search engines are partnering together so that webmasters can get their sites indexed easier and quicker.

The Google Sitemaps protocol, allows webmasters to update their webpages to Google and also see if the updated pages have been indexed. The agreement between the ‘big three’ means webmasters can now go to one place to update their pages to the search engines. Previous to this ‘situation’, webmasters have always had to go to each of the three search engines individually and perform similar actions.

A mutual press release stated – “In the first joint and open initiative to improve the web crawl process for search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft today announced support for Sitemaps 0.90, a free and easy way for webmasters to notify search engines about their websites and be indexed more comprehensively and efficiently, resulting in better representation in search indices. For users, Sitemaps enables higher quality, fresher search results."
The manual web page submission process supplements the traditional web crawling and does not automatically guarantee the pages will be included in a search engine's index.

The endeavor was first started by Google and Yahoo. Google executive Marissa Mayer said – “We thought it would be great for publishers and webmasters to be able to submit their content in one format for all the different search engines. We are proposing the format together and inviting other search engines to adopt it."

Ken Moss, General Manager of Windows Live Search at Microsoft, said - "Windows Live Search is happy to be working with Google and Yahoo on Sitemaps to not only help webmasters but also help consumers by delivering more relevant search results so they can find what they're looking for faster.”

On the subject of any future collaboration Ken Moss added – “I am sure this will be the first of many industry initiatives you will see us working and collaborating on."


After-thoughts:

Sounds good !
But will this be the first step towards monopolisation of the search industry? ...or has that already happened?

3rd December 2006 - 3E Web Marketing Director - Peter Shacolas

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