How this system works

X  Automatic Updates

Automatic updates of your sitemap will help to keep your most current information fresh in the search engines while you never have to remember to make the updates yourself.

It's easy to set it and then forget it!

X  Automatic Ping

When AutoMapIt uploads your sitemaps, we will optionally send a notification to the search engines so they know where to find your sitemaps the minute they get published.

If you will be manually handling the file transfer or choose not to notify the search engines immediately after your sitemaps are published, AutoMapIt allows you to set this as an option and we will skip this step. You can even choose which specific engines to ping or not to ping.

X  Expert Support

I have been working with websites since 1999 and come from a technical background prior to that. Over the past decade, I have studied the way search engines are constructed, the way they interact with websites, what makes them tick and what ticks them off.

AutoMapIt provides the tools to gather the data and I can help you to interpret what it all means.

Many AutoMapIt clients have seen huge gains after repairing issues uncovered by AutoMapIt. Try the Pro Membership for as little as $10 to see what kind of improvements this system can find.

X  Tweaking the results

AutoMapIt has a way for you to micro-manage any setting on any URL of your sitemap or to block an individual URL from appearing in your sitemaps.

This can be useful to help boost the priority of important pages or reduce the priority for rather 'unimportant' pages of your site. You can tell the search engines that a category page is updated more often than a product page... infinite control over each individual URL... or they adopt certain default settings if you don't want to tweak anything.

AutoMapIt uses as many 'safe default' settings for you as possible to make it easier to get started, but we also allow for you to completely customize your experience in any way you can imagine. It's the best of both worlds!

X  URL Exclusion Rules

AutoMapIt's unique set of URL filtering tools allow you exclude certain URLs on your website from being included in your sitemap. Why would you want to exclude URLs from your sitemap? I call them 'utility links' and you might recognize them as URLs that contain action=buynow or sort=up or action=makepost or something similar.

While these are very useful URLs for your website to have, there is generally no unique content between them. If you only have so many URLs to work with in your sitemap... they could be 25,000 products and 25,000 buy now pages, or they could be 50,000 individual product pages. Obviously, better coverage of your most important pages makes sense.

Filter out the 'utility links', but don't filter too many... my filter tools help you to specifically target only the URLs that need to be removed from your sitemap.

X  Clean URLs

SessionID's are used by some web servers and web applications to help keep track of a specific user across different pages. This is very useful on forums, blogs, and to store the contents of your shopping cart. The problem with this system when it comes to search engines is that they make every page of your site have a unique URL, even for the same content.

How many different URLs can point to the same page? 3 with 38 zeroes after it! The standard sessionID string uses 32 characters from 0-9 and a-f. Obviously, a search engine would tire of seeing the same exact content 'a lot of times' and wander away.

AutoMapIt has several built-in URL filters that strip the most common URL parts for this and still use the rest of the URL. If your site does not use the 'typical' sessionID identifiers, you can enter your custom session ID identifier into the system and it will recognize that setting for your site.

X  Automatic FTP Uploads

You have the option to securely enter your FTP information and AutoMapIt will automatically transfer your sitemap files to your website.

Opting to use the Automatic FTP Method will allow AutoMapIt to ping the search engines for you each time an updated version is placed on your website.

We will also be able to break your HTML sitemap into 'X' links per page (your choice) so that larger sites don't have monstrous sitemap files.

I employ security protocols that exceed the industry average. Of course, I only use secure URLs on all pages that involve account creation, management, or logging into the system. Your passwords are stored in my database using a proprietary encryption algorithm that I developed for this site. In the event that somebody should see this data, it cannot be understood. My code uses special protection on all forms to eliminate URL injection attacks. My web server uses software to monitor all incoming URL requests which are filtered through a set of rules to eliminate all types of injection attacks. My server has no active compilers to prevent the possibility that malicious programs are 'created' on the server. The Operating System is hardened against attacks and all non-essential software on the servers is disabled. I run daily checks for malicious software on the servers. Brute force attacks have been mitigated with an active firewall system. Any repeated attempts to gain access to the server are blocked from further attempts. I run monitoring software on all of these systems to alert me in case any systems fail or report an incident.

I take your security seriously, but there are several other methods of getting your sitemap if you prefer. You can Download on Demand or use the Cross-Domain Submission methods.

X  Manual File Transfer

Download on Demand is available for you if you do not want to share your FTP information or if you prefer to handle things manually. If you do not use FTP, then AutoMapIt cannot be certain of where and when your sitemap was uploaded to your site and we are unable to ping the search engines automatically for you.

X  AutoMapIt hosts your sitemaps

Cross-Domain Sitemap Submission is a recent addition to the Sitemap Protocol at Sitemaps.org. It allows you to have your sitemap hosted somewhere other than your own domain. If you can edit your robots.txt file, then AutoMapIt can host your sitemap file and you needn't worry about FTP.

The FTP method is the recommended version at AutoMapIt, but when it's not an option for you... it's nice to have this new method as an option!

X  Help your visitors to make shopping easier

AutoMapIt's Site Search Box helps increase your profits by making your content easy to find. Your visitors are happier since they can find what they want quickly and you reap the rewards!

Image Tagging is an effective way to add product images to your search results. Let your customers see the search results for added convenience.

You can customize the look and feel of your search results page using our simple color selector tools and Pro members can add a custom header image to the results pages.

X  Upgraded accounts get crawled more completely

Basic Accounts are limited to 500 URLs per domain. If your website has more than 500 URLs, there are many reasons to become a Pro Member. Review this list for many of those reasons!

Pro Members are limited to 50,000 URLs per update, but AutoMapIt is designed to use different URLs after the first 500 URLs... your homepage and core pages are used, then the newer pages from the backend of your site are used so that everything gets exposed.

X  No need to link back to AutoMapIt

Basic Accounts are required to link back to AutoMapIt from your homepage. Suitable links may be found at http://www.automapit.com/linktous.html.

Pro Members are not required to link back to AutoMapIt, but letting the world know about this service is always welcome ;)

X  Broken Link Checker Tool

The Broken Link Checker at AutoMapIt is designed to check all of the links used on all of your pages to make sure that you aren't linking off to nowhere. When search engines encounter links that don't result in another webpage, this sends off red flags and alarms that may sink your SEO efforts.

Having no broken links on your site at all signifies that you are currently maintaining your website and it means that the search engines aren't sending people off into the abyss of 'Page Not Found'.

Pro Members have the option of using this additional tool to help verify that your site is healthy enough for competition in the SEO arena.

Any errors or warnings are reported to you showing the URL the link was found on and the the URL it is linking to. This helps you to eliminate the issue quickly and move on with your core business and peace of mind.

X  Searchbox Statistics

Searchbox Statistics allow you to see what your visitors are searching for on your site. What's the best way to improve your core business? Find out what your visitors want.

Reviewing your searchbox usage reports, you can find out exactly what your visitors want and customize your website to give them just what they want!

X  Quality Checker

The Quality Checker is available as an optional tool for Pro Members. After studying the Webmaster Guidelines published by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com I noticed that they all said pretty much the same thing, but that different engines would apply specific limits to things other engines just 'mentioned'.
For example, all search engines say to keep your links to a minimum, but Google puts a number on it at 100 links per page. All engines reference keeping your files a 'reasonable' size, but MSN specifies a limit of 150,000 bytes per page.

Will ALL of your pages fall within the limits for these and other criteria set forth by the search engines themselves? The Quality Checker at AutoMapIt will check each of your pages for each criteria and report any errors that it found back to you.

This tool also scans every URL of your site for 'broken code'... not the W3C kind where they mention things like alt attributes, but a code checker that looks for things that can cause a spider to misunderstand the content on your page, or entire sections of your page.

X  SEO Tool

AutoMapIt offers an in-depth keyword analysis of one, two, and three word combos from every page of your site, but also shows an "overall site theme" that compiles every webpage into one list of keywords to determine what your sites theme is all about.

Don't miss the forest through the trees by only researching your single pages... find out where your site stands as a whole!

X  Track every link on your site

The Link Mapper was created in response to a customer request. He found links on his sitemap that he swore he had removed from his site. After I added this tool, he was able to look up the mystery URL and find out which of his pages still had active links to the mystery page.

This tool was designed to allow you to enter any URL from your site and to find out which of your pages links to it... and which links are on this page that lead somewhere else.

X  Faster Loading, Less Bandwidth

The time it takes to load your pages is the time that a visitor has the opportunity to get bored and surf away from your site. While most parts of a site may work fine, you might have some 'dark alleys' where pages load painfully slow. Is this a problem with your server? With your code?

AutoMapIt stores detailed records of the transaction for each of your pages measured to the millionth of a second. We measure the amount of time it takes for your server to process the spiders request for your page, when your server started sending info back to my spider, and how long it takes for the entire transfer to complete. We also know the filesize, so we can offer bandwidth reporting to see how fast your pages load in your visitors browser.

This level of reporting is available to all Pro Members for every URL we crawl.

X  Pre-pay for more frequent updates

By allowing Pro Members to set your own update schedule, AutoMapIt has become the ultimate sitemapping tool for any site. If you update your blog every day, then you may want more frequent updates than someone who only updates their catalog once per season.

I generally suggest to people that you shouldn't update your sitemaps more often than your website content gets updated. You can setup your own update schedule to occur every (1-30)(days,weeks,months). Mix it up and make it your own!