Now when a user verifies a site through Google Sitemaps, several new features can be accessed. Most interesting of which is under the “stats” tab. From here query stats, crawl stats, page analysis, and index stats can be viewed. The assumption being made is that what is listed in Google Sitemaps is considered important by Google and is most likely used in some way to determine rankings.

Query Stats

Query stats list the top queries for which your site was displayed and the top queries that resulted in a click. Google discussed using this type of data in their patent application to determine the focus of a site and how a site is changing. The fact that they keep track of it for Google Sitemaps indicates that is probably relevant to their ranking criteria.

Crawl Stats

Crawl stats show the relative number of pages that were successfully crawled by Google and the level of PageRank for pages in the site. It is speculated that having a large number of uncrawlable pages in a site will negatively affect rankings. Sitemaps provides some evidence that this is true. More interesting is the measure of PageRank distribution throughout the site. Often people will talk about the PageRank of a site in terms of the highest ranking page (usually their home page) and not in terms of a distribution. Why Google would put this information into Sitemaps sparks curiosity. It seems possible that Google may map an ideal distribution to determine the importance or validity of a site.

Page Analysis and Index Stats

Page analysis lists the types of pages Googlebot sees. It may be beneficial to provide a variety of formats. Index stats are common searches that show what Google has in its index.