I've been waiting for someone with power to propose something like this. Google Sitemaps is a new idea that allows webmasters to provide better communication with search engines. Webmasters make a simple XML file that includes a set of URLs on the site, relative importance, expected update frequency, etc., and submit to Google the URL of the site map. Presumably, Google will then download the site map and use it to better schedule when it spiders the pages on your site.

The mechanisms behind Google Sitemaps have been licensed by Google under a Creative Commons license that allows other services to freely use this technology to better improve their own quality. Hopefully, this will help the major search engines more intelligently spider the Web.

I've submitted my site map. Have you?