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How to submit sitemaps to Google / Yahoo on posting?

Google Sitemap HTTP Ping

This post talks about how to submit site map of your blog/site automatically to Google/Yahoo on posting the content every time. The normal process is to submit your sitemap in Google Webmaster tools, but the shortcoming is that Google picks the site maps on regular interval once in a day or so, but If you are updating content several times within a day then you might need to submit/update your sitemaps every time.

The process of sending sitemap updates to Google / Yahoo / other search engines is called HTTP Ping for sitemaps.

For Google below is the process of sitemap HTTP ping.

Build the following url say if
your website name is : http://www.mysite.com and

your sitemap url is http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml then the following is the url you need to build for sitemap

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml

Since we are sending the GET request we need to do a URLEncode of  the your sitemap url.

This can be achieved through following method UrlEncode  in PHP and Encode in Java or you can use free encoders available online to encode the sitemp url one time.

When I did encode of the above http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml  this is what I got    

So our final url is

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com%2Fsitemap.xml

send the request using wget or curl or any class of your choice.

If you get back HTTP 200 response then its a success else try it again. Google says you can send updates eevrytime you update/add content to your site  and it can be upto every hour. So this will help you boost the updated nature of your content in Google search engine. 

 

Yahoo Sitemap HTTP ping

Same approach works with Yahoo but in case of yahoo You need to get a App Id  from yahoo services

First Get App Id  =  http://developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/ 

use the appId in below url as I have mentioned earlier encode your sitemap  url and add it like 

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=AppId&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mysite.com%2Fsitemap.xml

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ATT wireless network down.. Call centres closed as well

There seems to be a huge ATT wireless network outage in parts of Michigan (We don’t have any info about other parts of Country). Please add it in comments section.

The Call centers are also down at this time. Most of their towers do not pickup signal in the affected areas.

Update : 14.40 EST Dec 28 2008

Finally was able to reach customer care and they said there is a PRIORITY 1 ticket on the issue, and they are trying to resolve the issue, They wouldnt divulge on how severe the impact is and they dont have any clue when it will be fixed, as they are still working on that. So Have a nice sunday…

Based on comments the issue is also affecting customers in Illinois and should be in other area of MidWest.

Update

1800 EST – Towers are back up still call not going through 🙁

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Satyam banned by World Bank for bribery, Data Theft

World Bank released a statement on Monday confirming rumours about banning Satyam compuers from its site. It is learned Satyam bribed some bank officials to get the contract and it did not maintain invoices for financial transactions with World Bank Officials.

This along with Data Theft has seriously questioned any credibility on Satyam a Hyderabad based computer software services company.

Last week Satyam was in all wrong news for a different reason, Ramalinga Raju the Satyam promoter tried to buy a properties firm Maytas properties (Which is owned by Ramalinga Raju’s son), Satyam being a listed company apporved the process through its so called independant board, when the takeover news came out the institutional investors cried foul and Satyam backed of from the deal.

Now a separate invetigation against Satyam’s ethical conduct is being conducted under India’s companies law.

Satyam is Listed in Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and NSE (National Stock Excahnge)