Google Sitemaps
 Google released guidelines for creating an XML-formatted file that would allow webmasters to create a complete list of the pages on their site(s). This is a wonderful answer to all of the time effort and energy that webmasters use to spend trying to get Google to index more of their pages.
Google requires you to signup for a webmaster tools account and then you can begin submitting the Google sitemaps for each of your sites. These sitemaps are easily setup using various online tools to create the correctly formatted file for you. You will want to be sure to keep these sitemaps up-to-date; this will give Google the impression that your site has updated content and is being managed (some say this will help your search engine rankings).
Yahoo Site Explorer Services
 Yahoo has answered to Googles service by creating what they call Yahoo Site Explorer. There service is similar in that you create a predefined sitemap file and submit the location of that sitemap to Yahoo. This again can dramatically increase the possibility of getting more of your webpages included in Yahoo's search index. The use of Yahoo Site Explorer goes require an Yahoo account to signup, but like Google this is a free service. All of Yahoo's services are easy to use for most people.
Yahoo provides an excellent source for determining how your site is doing on multipe search engines. Google does command the majority of web searches, but their search results and Yahoo's can vary. If you are doing good on Google and on Yahoo's SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) then you usually have a well programmed site for all search engines.
Creating an HTML Sitemap for your site
It is always suggested that you include an HTML sitemap on your site. This can help your website visitors in a number of ways. Most importantly it allows your visitors a quick location to go and try to find the exact page or information that they are looking for without a lot of extra clicking. These sitemap pages can also provide search engines another avenue to find the pages that are on your site. XML-Sitemaps.com is a great free service that will crawl your site and create the sitemaps that you need including Google, Yahoo, Text and/ or HTML format.
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