what are the pros/cons for google site maps instead of your own site maps created?

does rew use google site maps?

__________________
downtown san diego real estate
Freelance Programmer
downtown san diego condos

also, is it better to have google do a Sitemap Generator or manually create one?

__________________
downtown san diego real estate
Freelance Programmer
downtown san diego condos

The sitemap that google wants is quite different from the sitemap your visitors would want to see:
A Google sitemap should be XML and is not visible to site visitors.
You can create an XML sitemap manually however its easier and more accurate with a sitemap generator.

Found a great self generator

I recommend Softplus Gsite Crawler to generate XML and Gziped XML sitemaps to use with Google webmaster tools.

I also use a regular sitemap that is a simple page detailing all the pages on my site.

__________________
Steve Castaneda, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
The MyHomeHouston Team

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to visit my Houston Real Estate Blog or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

what does rew use?

__________________
downtown san diego real estate
Freelance Programmer
downtown san diego condos

I use they sitemap generator provided by google, a small python script.

__________________
San Diego Real Estate | San Diego Foreclosures | San Diego Short Sales

__________________

hey steve. i downloaded the softplus gsite crawler and generated a crawl through my site. it's showing over 1100 pages. most of these are property details and some images. do i include everything that the crawler is showing or just my main pages?

__________________
downtown san diego real estate
Freelance Programmer
downtown san diego condos

Definitely agree here, Softplus Gsite Crawler is the best, it will create the xml maps for google, in addition to text for yahoo, and so on.. it's awesome,a nd really easy to use, it even uploads the sitemap to your server for you.

The images go into google image search, and then you're likely to get more traffic from people looking for pictures of properties than people looking for properties, however, that is still doorway to your website. As for property details, yep, leave those there Those are additional pages, and again, more doorways, and if they are property details, they're probably what you're wanting visitors to see..