what is the difference between the google sitemap and sitemap builder tools?

Answer by: George Kaloyanov, Aplus.Net Knowledge Base Support.

A common Sitemap is an HTML page that lists links (URLs) to all the different pages in a website, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. A Sitemap page will help your visitors to better navigate within your own website.

The Google Sitemap allows webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their website that are available for crawling. The Google Sitemap is actually an XML file that lists the URLs for a site using the Google Sitemap Protocol. Note that the Sitemap Protocol is only a supplement and does not replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines use to discover URLs. By submitting a Sitemap to a search engine, you are only helping that engine’s crawlers to do a better job of indexing your site.

Aplus.Net now offers two Sitemap tools to shared-hosting customers. The Sitemap Builder tool helps webmasters to generate and publish a Sitemap HTML page to their own website, while the Google Sitemap tool helps webmasters to generate and submit a Google Sitemap XML file to the Google Search Engine.

Sitemap Facts:

The Sitemap generated by the Google Sitemap tool is an XML file which is submitted to the Google Search Engine. You will need a valid Google Account to submit the Sitemap XML file to the Google Search Engine.

The Sitemap generated by the Sitemap Builder tool is an HTML file which is published to your own website. The file will published to your /html or /wwwroot folder as domain.com-sitemap.html.

Both tools share same base Sitemap file. If you generate a Google Sitemap first, you can also use the Sitemap Builder to directly publish your own HTML Sitemap page and vice versa.

You can generate one Sitemap page per 24 hours.