Google Sitemaps Adds Spam Checking, New Webmaster Help Center & Other Features

I just came out of the Meet the Crawlers session, where Google announced new features and a new layout for Google Sitemaps. The Sitemaps blog just posted the details as well. One huge feature is that Google tells you if your site is in the index or not and if it is not, they won't tell you why.

Here is a break down of the new features:

+ New verification method
+ Indexing snapshot
+ Notification of violations of the webmaster guidelines
+ Reinclusion request form
+ Spam report
+ New webmaster help center
+ More about our new look
+ Adding a Sitemap
+ Navigating the tabs

Full feature list at sitemaps blog.

Postscript: Matt Cutts just pinged me to let me know he has posted an entry named Notifying webmasters of penalties. That entry explains that the Google Web Search Team and Google Sitemap Team working together to notify "some (but not all)" webmasters of Google site penalties.