Somehow Vanessa found time in her crazy busy schedule to answer some follow-up questions.   Thanks Vanessa.   If you have not yet tried Google Sitemaps, you are missing out.

• If Google’s search engine was not available, what would you use to find things?
  I’m very glad Google is around. I remember the hours and hours I spent in the library, looking through old microfilm and microfiche back when I was in college. Kids today just don’t know. I guess that’s my generation’s “walking to school in the snow uphill both ways” story. We tell the young whippersnappers about the days before Google. I still use the library all the time, but now I can use Google for my Britney Spears searches.

• What are the best places for people to learn beginner and advanced information about Google Sitemaps?
  We have quite a bit of information available in our Sitemaps documentation at http://google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html. The blog is also a great place to find out about new features and to get answers: http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/. Our Google Group is full of helpful members who have been using Sitemaps for a while and are always glad to answer questions: http://groups.google.com/group/google-sitemaps.

• Is there any danger to using a sitemap that contains a partial list of urls for a large site that is already indexed?  Will the pages not listed in the sitemap be removed?
  Pages not listed in a Sitemap won’t be removed. Google Sitemaps is a way for webmasters to submit all their URLs to Google, and it is used in addition to and not as a replacement for the web-crawl mechanisms Google currently uses to discover URLs. It enables Google’s crawlers to do a better job crawling websites.

• Could the Google Sitemap program be turned into a paid inclusion program or a expedited indexing paid service?
  We have no plans to charge for anything we offer as part Google Sitemaps, and we don’t accept payment for inclusion in our search results. Google Sitemaps is part of our ongoing efforts to create innovative search technologies and make finding relevenat information faster and easier. We want to provide users with the best search results possible on the online and mobile web. Knowing as much we can about sites and letting webmasters know when we’re having trouble crawling a site helps us do that.

• What are your feelings on site owners allowing consultants to manage their sitemap?
  That works very well for some site owners. We try to provide as much information as we can to help webmasters who don’t have a lot of experience managing a site, but some site owners like having some professional help. I recently wrote a blog post (http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/02/giving-others-access-to-sitemaps.html) where I talked about how a consultant and site owner can use separate accounts to access the same information for a site and Sitemap.

• At Google’s Mountain View complex they have lots of perks (onsite chef, dry cleaning etc.) What’s it like in Kirkland?
  Google is really committed to bringing the Google culture to the remote offices. I do make sure to schedule lunch into my trips to Mountain View so I don’t miss out on the food, but they feed us well up here and we have a lot of the same perks. We have a foosball table, but no pool table. We’re a little sad about that.

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