Submitted by: kirkland on Friday November 17th, 2006 at 06:22 PM EST

Strange bedfellows Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. have partnered to simplify how webmasters and online publishers submit their sites' content for indexing in the companies' search engines.

In a rare collaborative effort, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which compete directly in Internet search and other online services, plan to announce on Thursday their support for the open-source Sitemap Protocol, based on XML.

This protocol, which Google created and has been using for about 18 months, will be adopted by Yahoo effective Thursday, and the three companies will collaborate to extend and enhance it. Yahoo has been using another protocol, which it will continue to support. Microsoft will stop using its current protocol after it implements Sitemap Protocol in its search engine in early 2007.

A site map is a file that webmasters and publishers put on their sites to guide the search engines' automated Web crawlers in properly indexing their Web pages.

» Full story @ Computer World