Now that all three of the major search engines have adopted the same sitemap protocol, submitting a list of all your website's URLs is much, much simpler.  Sitemaps are but one of the ways website owners can get bulk lists of their URLs into the search engine crawler's proverbial mouths.  In fact, Bruceclay.com has another great panel discussion summary focusing on bulk URL submissions that is definitely worth a read.

Speakers from Google, Yahoo, Performics, and Range Online Media were present to present on the subject.  Highlights of information discussed at the panel include:

• Google Sitemaps accepts text files, RSS/Atom feeds, sitemaps in the sitemaps.org protocol, and OAI-PMG (which Bruceclay.com says you'll never use)
• Google Sitemap submission are best placed in the highest directory for which you are submitting and must match the URLs in the sitemap
• Sitemaps are best without unnecessary parameters (like session IDs)
• Google Sitemaps accepts a max of 50,000 URLs or 10 MB worth of addresses
• Compress sitemaps using gzip
• Yahoo! stresses the importance of authenticating your website (which is very simple and pain free);  authenticating allows Yahoo! to show you more detailed information about your website
• Yahoo! is still working hard to bring more tools and features to it's Site Explorer tool
• Once submitted, sitemaps usually get downloaded within a day or two and the included URLs get crawled in 3 - 14 days
• Linking to your sitemap in the footer is a good way to get the sitemap crawled by search engines that don't have bulk upload options
• Create separate sitemaps for mobile content and news sections
• Feeds are excellent ways to get products listed in comparison shopping sites

Like I said, these are just the highlights of the panel review.  You can imagine how much more the article contains if there are this many highlights.  Having used both Google and Yahoo! sitemaps, I can say without a doubt that they're easy to submit to and both services keep your up to date on your sitemap's status.

Bulk uploading with feeds and sitemaps is great because it 1)gets your entire list of URLs into the crawler and 2)makes it easy for the crawlers to get alerted to new content.  When you add something new to your website, add it to your existing sitemap and just let Google and Yahoo! know something new is there.  Both crawlers will quickly swing by your site to pick up the new content.

Combined with the robots.txt file, sitemaps offer a level of control for website owners that just wasn't possible several years ago.  Take advantage of the ease of use and minimize missed URLs with a sitemap.