The process of submitting your sitemap is quite simple. If you are a blogger user (blogger.com) the link to your sitemap would be your-blog-address.blogspotcom/atom.xml. For eg http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml

But theres one problem here. A standard sitemap must contain all the links in your blog. However if your blog is hosted on blogger, your sitemap will contain only the 26 most recent posts. But there is a simple workaround to this.

Suppose that your blog (taking an eg. myfreehouse.blogpsot.com) contains 200 posts. So for the first 100 you can use http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

For the next 100 you can use http://myfreehouse.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=100&max-results=200 and son on.

If you are a wordpress user you can just install the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress. Your sitemap will be auto-generated at your-blog-address.com/sitemap.xml. For eg. http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

Submitting your sitemaps:

So now to the main part Submitting your sitemaps. Just follow the following steps. Remember to replace the text in red with your sitemap’s address:

• Google

  You can follow this tutorial to submit your sitemap to Google.

• Yahoo

  1. http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml
  2. http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

• Bing

  1. http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml
  2. http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

• Ask

  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://techwithric.com/sitemap.xml

If submit your sitempas to the major search engines, it is more likely that they will crawl your website more quickly. So do it! Hope you liked this tutorial. More to follow!

This service, although is available for people living in USA only but there is a way around to get it working for persons living anywhere in the world. Follow the below mentioned steps and get in touch with your friends, family or acquaintances ( Whom you haven’t met in a long time ) :-

For users living in USA –

1. You need to call a toll-free number, so if you call from Landline its a free call for you. Mobile calls, am afraid could be charged (local charges).
2. Call 18003733411 from your US Landline/Mobile. The operator will greet you with a welcome message and ask you to select one of the FREE411 service. The Last option is Free Call. You don’t have to press any number or key to select but instead say FREE CALL loudly in your phone.
3. This voice message will be read by their server and you will go to next step to actually make a free international call. Now they will run a short ad about 5 secs. When the ad stops, you can start dialing your international number in countycode+citycode (if any)+phone number format. ( Please DO NOT press # or *, its NOT required.)
4. The call will be automatically placed to the desired number. The operator prompts your call is getting connected. Once connected you can talk for upto 5 minutes and then your call is disconnected.
5. You can talk upto 5 minutes per call. You can make multiple calls.

For users living OUTSIDE USA –

Not living in USA ? Well there is always another way of doing things, follow the below mentioned steps to take advantage of this awesome service :-

1. For making free calls, you will be needing yahoo messenger voice client for pc. You can download it from this link.
2. Click on the yahoo voice tab as shown in the image below:
3. Click on the ‘ Call a Phone Number from my PC… ‘ option.
4. Dial the number (18003733411) and press enter.
5. Your call will be connected and you would notice a prompt, which says there is no charge for this call.
6. Now follow the 3rd and 4th step mentioned above for USA users.

That’s it !!!

You can now make mutiple calls with a time period of 5 minutes per call.

PLEASE NOTE — This service is totally advertisement based so please do not abuse/violate the system.

UPDATE : Many of the Indian readers were complaining of them not being able to use the service. It might be due to the fact that while using yahoo messenger, you will be asked for option to select the country at that time you have to select USA and NOT India. If you are still facing any problems, leave a comment here.
Yet another UPDATE (I know it’s getting boring!!): Looks like Y Messenger just stopped working in the above fashion in India! Found an alternative, just use Skype!