Can you index using an Google-XML-Sitemap format or XML like file?

[carlosor]

Hi

I wonder if ZOOM could use for the indexing process, an XML file who would drive it.
I mean.
I use Microsoft ASP as the web programming platform. And many ASP generated files don't have the META DESCRIPTION tag, thus as I have read from documentation, it would take the first text from the HTML so supply as the meta DESCRIPTION, but what if the XML would have it and would say also the ASP which is to index, or something as a sitemap driven indexing.

[Ray]

The "first part of the text from the HTML" is only used as a meta description if Context Descriptions are disabled. Context descriptions are superior and provide the sentence from which the match was found. So always enable this unless not possible (namely the JavaScript version).

Having said that, there's no reason an ASP generated page would not have a meta description. If anything, it should be easier to add meta descriptions to pages because you don't need to do a mass edit across many files.

Zoom allows for meta descriptions to be specified either as the normal meta description tag, or a meta ZOOMDESCRIPTION tag, e.g.

<meta name="ZOOMDESCRIPTION" content="My page about dogs." />

It is not a common request to feed alternative page descriptions via a XML file, so this is not something we intend to add unless more people require it.

What is creating your Sitemap XML file? Where is _that_ getting the page descriptions from? If it is somewhere in your database, then you can change the ASP scripts to retrieve that and insert it into the actual pages.