Google released Google Sitemaps, a service to allow Webmasters to automatically submit their own pages for indexing into Google's search engine. After a developer submits their site, Google Sitemaps automatically generates an XML-formatted site map, containing "a list of the URLs that the site owner wants Google to crawl, and then hosts the file on their servers and tells Google where to find it."

Google calls it "a beta 'ecosystem' that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index".

The Google Sitemaps is a free online service for Webmasters. The idea is that the better information , google has about a site the better and more completely they'll be able to index it. It is an easy way to help improve website coverage in the Google index. It's a collaborative crawling system that enables you to communicate directly with Google to keep informing about all your web pages, and about the changes that are made to these pages.

In simple words, it allows you to tell Google which web sites it should crawl and about the changes in the content. By placing a Sitemap-formatted file on the web server, you enable crawlers to find out what pages are present , which have changed recently, and tell Google to crawl the site accordingly.

How do you submit your sitemap to Google Sitemaps?

The easiest way to submit web page URLs to Google Sitemaps is to create a list of URLs in plain text format by entering one URL per line and save that list with the file ending with .xml extension. Login to Google Sitemaps and upload that file. It also offers a more sophisticated tool that allows to create a sitemap but a plain list will also do.

The Google Sitemaps does not influence the rankings of the website. It helps Google to determine the existence of the web pages. These sitemaps are useful if web pages aren't crawled by Google's spider. However, the rankings are not increased using Google Sitemaps.

It is perhaps the most important new feature for SEOs offered by Google in a long time. They invites webmasters to feed site data directly to Google through an XML page. Google has been kind enough to provide detailed information on establishing an XML feed and setting priorities for Google bot.

Basically, the two steps to participating in Google Sitemaps are:
1) Generate a Sitemap in the correct format using Sitemap Generator.
2) Update your Sitemap when you make changes to your site.

Google adds Sitemap feeds for URL submissions

Google lets webmasters submit lists of new webpages for Google to crawl. This will help Google to get accurate information about web pages, updates and site structure. Yahoo! is now the only search engine that offers paid inclusion, letting webmasters pay to ensure that the search engine crawls and includes new web pages added to the site. Yahoo paid inclusion program users normally inform Yahoo! about new pages by the use of a special XML text file containing information about new pages, their URLs, content and so on. Google does see the advantage of having access to data that makes it easier for the search engine crawlers to find new files and generated a new service called Google Sitemaps.

Google will not punish sites without Sitemap feeds, and will continue to crawl sites as it did before. Including links to new webpages on the home page or some of your most visited pages on the site will for instance ensure that Google find these pages quickly.

However, Google may eventually expand its current reporting system, giving users access to data , showing popular search terms and click-through rates. If this happens, the added value may make this system valuable even for very small sites.

Benefits of Google Sitemaps :

1) Better crawl coverage to help people find more of your web pages
2) Fresher search results
3) A smarter crawl because you can provide specific information about all your web pages, such as when a page was last modified or how frequently a page changes.