Q and A: Which is the best Google Sitemap creator to use?

Dear Kalena...

I have been searching for an online tool that will create an XML sitemap for Google automatically and I've found quite a few. But they all seem quite complicated and some of them charge a fee.

Do you have a favorite or can you recommend a good one to use, preferably a free one?

thanks
Akita

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Akita

Funny you should mention this. To create my Google Sitemaps, I had been using SiteMaps Pal, but I haven't been completely happy with it because it seemed to skip sub-directories and pages quite often.

But just this week I came across the free XML Sitemaps Generator and I'm now a big fan. It not only trawls through ALL levels of your site, but it gives you a running count of pages, provides a text-based URL list and a HTML sitemap you can import straight into your site, plus it generates the XML file for you in both compressed and un-compressed versions. Sweet! If only the free version gave you the ability to manually edit page priority and index dates and re-generate the XML, I'd be an even bigger fan (hint hint!)

There is also a low-cost script-based version for sites with thousands of pages. It can be set up to index your site on a regular basis and produce an updated XML file for automatic upload to your site via FTP. The XML Sitemaps Generator is also included in Google's List of 3rd Party Plugins for Sitemaps.