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What is a Geo Sitemap?

Geo Sitemaps are very similar to regular sitemap.xml files (both versions are in xml format), but show the latitude and longitude associated with the website, along with information about the placemarker. Here it is in Google’s own words:

” Google Geo Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to publish geospatial content (geo content) to Google, in order to make it searchable in Google Earth and on Google Maps.”

“With Geo Sitemaps, you can tell Googlebot about your geo content, rather than waiting for us to discover it “in the wild”. While we cannot guarantee when or if your geo content will be added to our GeoSearch index, we are continuously working to improve the coverage, freshness and quality of our index.”

Benefits/Features of a Geo Sitemap

A Geo Sitemap can provide traffic from listings in map-based applications such as Google Maps  and Google Earth. A Geo Sitemap can also help your website listing stand out with the following extra line (Show map of…), which gives users a quick link to a map of your location:

Geo Sitemaps are most important for local businesses or websites that are related to a geographic location. Basically, if your business or website would benefit in any way from traffic searching for you on a geographic basis (i.e. local search), you should have a Geo Sitemap.

Finding Your Coordinates

A simple way to find your coordinates based on a U.S. address is Google’s Position Finder. If you have a Google Account, you can add it to Google Maps and every time you click on a Map, a popup will appear with the coordinates of your search. Another easy option is http://geocoder.us. Copy and paste the latitude and longitude coordinates associated with your address to include in your Geo Sitemap.

1. Creating a KML Geo Sitemap

Open notepad or your favorite XML editor.

1.1 KML Code Example

Copy and paste the following code and make all necessary changes:

1. <kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2"
2. xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
3. <Document>
4. <name>Company Name</name>
5. <atom:author>
6. <atom:name>Author Name (may be company name)</atom:name>
7. </atom:author>
8. <atom:link href="http://www.domain.com/" />
9. <Placemark>
10. <name>Name Of Location (e.g. 'Office Location')</name>
11. <description>
12. <![CDATA[
13. <address>
14. <a href="http://www.domain.com/">Company Name</a><br />
15. Address: [street city, state zip]<br />
16. Phone: [phone]
17. </address>
18. <p>A small company description.</p>
19. ]]>
20. </description>
21. <Point>
22. <coordinates>longitude,latitude</coordinates>
23. </Point>
24. </Placemark>
25. </Document>
26. </kml>

Just replace the necessary information like “company name” with your own and feel free to include as many placemarks as you wish (if you have multiple buildings, multiple office locations, etc.). You can view or download my own Geo Sitemap at http://www.newshoemedia.com/geo-sitemap.kml.

Save the file as geo-sitemap.kml (you can name it whatever you like, but keep the .kml extension).

1.2 Uploading the KML sitemap to your server

Upload geo-sitemap.kml to the root directory for your domain, so that it can be accessed by going to www.yourdomain.com/geo-sitemap.kml.

1.3 Including the KML Geo Sitemap in your sitemap.xml

Update: I had this part completely wrong – I understood Google’s documentation to mean that the Geo Sitemap reference can be added inside your regular sitemap.xml file. Instead, Google recommends that you separate your sitemaps based on the type of content the URLs are pointing to.

First, create a Sitemap Index file that references your regular sitemap (with URLs pointing to your HTML pages), your Geo Sitemap, and any other Sitemaps (i.e. Video Sitemap) you want to include.

Now you’ll need to create a XML sitemap that points to your KML sitemap: use this code:

1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
2. xmlns:geo="http://www.google.com/geo/schemas/sitemap/1.0">
3. <url>
4. <loc>http://www.domain.com/geo-sitemap.kml</loc>
5. <geo:geo>
6. <geo:format>kml</geo:format>
7. </geo:geo>
8. </url>
9. </urlset>

Upload all the XML sitemaps, and the KML sitemap, and Voilà! Next time Google indexes them, it will find your Geo Sitemap.

2. Submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

You will want to add the sitemap.xml (regular sitemap), geo-sitemap.xml (Geo Sitemap), and the sitemap_index.xml (Sitemap Index)  to Google Webmaster Tools to make sure that Google can find all the pages on your website that you want to be findable in search, and to alert Google that you have a new Geo Sitemap.

Here are the authoritative references for building a Geo Sitemap:

http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlSearch.html
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94554

3. Common Problem: MIME Type Errors

You won’t be able to validate the KML file if your server isn’t set to send the proper response code. If you are having trouble validating your Geo Sitemap, or if you are able to see the sitemap by typing in the URL in a regular browser, then chances are, your server is treating it as a text/plain document, and not a KML file.

Here is Google’s documentation for KML Mime Types, including how to change your server configuration if needed:  http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kml_tut.html#kml_server.