Last spring, the Sitemaps protocol was expanded to include the autodiscovery of Sitemaps using robots.txt to let us and other search engines supporting the protocol know about your Sitemaps. We subsequently also announced support for Sitemap cross-submissions using Google Webmaster Tools, making it possible to submit Sitemaps for multiple hosts on a single dedicated host. So it was only time before we took the next logical step of marrying the two and allowing Sitemap cross-submissions using robots.txt. And today we're doing just that.
We're making it easier for webmasters to place Sitemaps for multiple hosts on a single host and then letting us know by including the location of these Sitemaps in the appropriate robots.txt.
How would this work? Say for example you want to submit a Sitemap for each of the two hosts you own, www.example.com and host2.google.com. For simplicity's sake, you may want to host the Sitemaps on one of the hosts, www.example.com. For example, if you have a Content Management System (CMS), it might be easier for you to change your robots.txt files than to change content in a directory.
You can now exercise the cross-submission support via robots.txt (by letting us know the location of the Sitemaps):
a) The robots.txt for www.example.com would include: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-www-example.xml
b) And similarly, the robots.txt for host2.google.com would include: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap-host2-google.xml
By indicating in each individual host's robots.txt file where that host's Sitemap lives you are in essence proving that you own the host for which you are specifying the Sitemap. And by choosing to host all of the Sitemaps on a single host, it becomes simpler to manage your Sitemaps.
We are making this announcement today on Sitemaps.org as a joint effort. To see what our colleagues have to say, you can also check out the blog posts published by Yahoo! and Microsoft.
