Introducing sitemaps.org
Yahoo and MSN are jumping on board Google’s sitemap idea. At sitemaps.org the first paragraph describes the use of sitemaps:
Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.
The sitemap protocol is described on the site along with a comprehensive FAQ.
The upshot of the project is only one sitemap needs to be published for all search engines (if the others gravitate to its use).
Remember that using the sitemap does not guarantee web pages will be included in an index.
Doug