Got a sitemap question? Look here.

rainforest1155 · February 13, 2012

If Google doesn't seem to detect your sitemap, you can go about manually adding it. The url to your sitemap is just your domain (or SmugMug nickname if you do not have a custom domain) followed by sitemap-index.xml . For example the sitemap for my site is:
http://www.sebastianhosche.com/sitemap-index.xml

After submitting the sitemap, it can take a while for Google to get to it, but not to worry as the temporary unavailability of the sitemap doesn't affect the pages already indexed by Google.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

jasonscottphoto · February 13, 2012

rainforest1155 wrote: »

If Google doesn't seem to detect your sitemap, you can go about manually adding it. The url to your sitemap is just your domain (or SmugMug nickname if you do not have a custom domain) followed by sitemap-index.xml . For example the sitemap for my site is:
http://www.sebastianhosche.com/sitemap-index.xml

After submitting the sitemap, it can take a while for Google to get to it, but not to worry as the temporary unavailability of the sitemap doesn't affect the pages already indexed by Google.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

It was just weird because it DID detect it before and it worked for a long time, then all of a sudden stopped.

jasonscottphoto · February 23, 2012

Now even me submitting it myself didn't work. Showing an error that it can't find the sitemap.

rainforest1155 · February 24, 2012

affdigphotos wrote: »

Now even me submitting it myself didn't work. Showing an error that it can't find the sitemap.

Yes, it still can take time for Google to recognize it. Give it a week or two.

You can only submit the sitemap manually if Google isn't locating it on its own, which may take a couple of weeks. If the sitemap already was indexed at some point, do not remove and resubmit manually as you will not gain any by that.

jasonscottphoto · February 24, 2012

I just don't understand why it was found before automatically and now it isn't?

rainforest1155 · February 25, 2012

affdigphotos wrote: »

I just don't understand why it was found before automatically and now it isn't?

Google will eventually find it, it just takes more time at this point.

Dynamic · June 18, 2012

Are Site Maps OK?
Hi

I am sure my sitemaps have been working, but I see errors today on Google Webmaster tools. This led me to looking for my sitemaps and they do not seem to be there.....

www.picturestar.co.uk/sitemap-index.xml

and

www.picturestar.co.uk/sitemap-galleryimages.xml.gz

do not seem to exist?

Has something changed?

Peter S

Dynamic · June 19, 2012

Sitemaps missing??
Had no response to the question above. So I looked at some of the sites in posts above. They do not seem to have sitemaps at www.domain.com/sitemaps-index.xml

Have they moved or been renamed??

Peter S

rainforest1155 · June 19, 2012

Peter, it's been reported to our QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

JayP · June 23, 2012

Image sitemap?
Hi. Do I need to develop a separate image sitemap to submit to Google and Bing so my images in my galleries will be indexed? Thanks.

JayP · June 23, 2012

Sitemap errors on Google
I just received thse new errors? Not sure what they mean.

Thanks.

General HTTP error: 404 not foundSitemap: /sitemap-galleryimages.xml.gz
HTTP Error: 404

General HTTP error: 404 not foundSitemap: /sitemap-base.xml.gz
HTTP Error: 404

JayP · June 23, 2012

rainforest1155 wrote: »

Peter, it's been reported to our QA team for further investigation. Thanks for reporting.

Hi - is this fixed? When I try to view my sitemap I get a blank screen. www.bluewaterprism.com/sitemap-index.xml

Thanks

rainforest1155 · June 24, 2012

JayP wrote: »

Hi - is this fixed? When I try to view my sitemap I get a blank screen. www.bluewaterprism.com/sitemap-index.xml

Jay, it's still being looked into. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Niphotos · June 25, 2012

No Sitemap
My website has had no site map for Google to download , i have complained several times but still no action on this , the site map http://www.niphotos.co.uk/sitemap-index.xml cannot be seen , i don't want excuses etc i just want it fixed , as all i have been getting is the same old excuse from the " smug mug heroes " please see attached screenshot Joe :boid

Andy · June 25, 2012

Joe, thanks for posting, we're aware of the problem and we're attempting to get it fixed as fast as possible.

Niphotos · June 25, 2012

Andy wrote: »

Joe, thanks for posting, we're aware of the problem and we're attempting to get it fixed as fast as possible.

Ah , thought you had left , yes thanks for your reply and hopefully you and the team will sort it out .... Joe

Andy · June 25, 2012

Niphotos wrote: »

Ah , thought you had left , yes thanks for your reply and hopefully you and the team will sort it out .... Joe

Left

JayP · June 25, 2012

Hi Andy - since we all are waiting for this resolution can you post a "sticky" message when fixed? Thanks for the help.

Andy · June 25, 2012

JayP wrote: »

Hi Andy - since we all are waiting for this resolution can you post a "sticky" message when fixed? Thanks for the help.

We'll update this thread

Andy · June 27, 2012

We've fixed the empty sitemap issue, sorry for the hassle, folks.

DesptachesGallery · August 22, 2012

Blank Sitemap
Hi - I note there was an issue with blank sitemaps back in June. Andy mentioned it had been fixed, however ours is blank.

http://www.despatchesgallery.com/sitemap-index.xml

However, this could be because we've locked the site down (password protected and NOT Hello World).

Any suggestions? Thanks!

rainforest1155 · August 22, 2012

DesptachesGallery wrote: »

Hi - I note there was an issue with blank sitemaps back in June. Andy mentioned it had been fixed, however ours is blank.

http://www.despatchesgallery.com/sitemap-index.xml

However, this could be because we've locked the site down (password protected and NOT Hello World).

Any suggestions? Thanks!

That's right, with the viewing password in place and hello world (Google Search Visibility) set to no, search engines cannot access your site which in turn results in no sitemap. You'd need to remove the password and set hello world to yes to allow search engines in and thus resulting in the creation of a sitemap.

chipj · August 22, 2012

DesptachesGallery wrote: »

Hi - I note there was an issue with blank sitemaps back in June. Andy mentioned it had been fixed, however ours is blank.

http://www.despatchesgallery.com/sitemap-index.xml

However, this could be because we've locked the site down (password protected and NOT Hello World).

Any suggestions? Thanks!

If you have password protected your website, Google won't be able to access any of the content on your site. I tried reaching your sitemap via the URL above and all I get is a blank screen. If you want to show up in Google search results, AND then have your sitemap seen by Google you'll need to remove the password protection. Google can't login to a password protected site.

Why are you password protecting your site?

OffTopic · August 22, 2012

Second time in a week that I was notified that googlebot was unable to crawl my site because of a problem with robots.txt again. On the 18th I was notified that googlebot received too many errors (46% error rate) and my site would not be crawled again until I fixed the errors. Following the instructions in their e-mail I poked around a bit, figured it was just a temporary hiccup, Fetched as Googlebot successfully and Submitted. I thought it was just a temporary problem until I received notification again this morning that because the error rate was 43% my site would not be crawled.

In Webmaster Tools I see that Google hasn't been able to crawl my site since 15 August because it has been receiving 503 Service Unavailable errors from the server.

I know that in the past you have felt the need to throttle back the bots because you believed they were impacting site usability. Is that the case again, and if so can you share with us how long this condition will last? A day or two is not a big thing but when google is prevented from crawling my site for an extended period of time it does become a concern.

chipj · August 22, 2012

OffTopic wrote: »

Second time in a week that I was notified that googlebot was unable to crawl my site because of a problem with robots.txt again.[...]

Same with my site. I've noticed that in Webmaster Tools my site has been pretty much error free over the past three months, BUT beginning on August 17th, multiple crawl issues have cropped up.

The robots.txt error is one of the issues. The other issues have to do with the indexing of certain URL's, resulting in a 503 error ("Service unavailable"). A majority of these url errors are keyword urls, but not all are.

DesptachesGallery · August 22, 2012

chipj wrote: »

Why are you password protecting your site?

Hi Chip - protecting it during development - we want to ensure it's thoroughly tested before we release it to the public.

Thanks!

chipj · August 23, 2012

DesptachesGallery wrote: »

Hi Chip - protecting it during development - we want to ensure it's thoroughly tested before we release it to the public.

Thanks!

Got it. Unfortunately that's where the issue is. You won't be able to see much data in Google Webmaster Tools until after you've removed the password protection. If I were you, I would try to remove that password protection as soon as possible so that you're site doesn't get branded by the search bots as a password protected site.

DesptachesGallery · August 23, 2012

chipj wrote: »

Got it. Unfortunately that's where the issue is. You won't be able to see much data in Google Webmaster Tools until after you've removed the password protection. If I were you, I would try to remove that password protection as soon as possible so that you're site doesn't get branded by the search bots as a password protected site.

Chip - yes we understand that. Our rollout will be synchronised across quite a few areas - media, live webcast launch, etc. We'll have content all loaded and keyworded etc then make it public some weeks before the offocial announcements, hopefully meaning the bots will crawl and index beforehand.

We agree that that's a pretty big "hopefully"...

@rainforest - thankyou also for your post.

ricksphotography · August 31, 2012

My SmugMug account has NEVER been "Seen" by Google
Looking over my Google webmaster files, I just noticed that my smugmug account has NEVER be recognized. The error message:

http://ricks-photography.smugmug.com/: Googlebot can't access your site
August 18, 2012
Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 2 errors while attempting to access your robots.txt. To ensure that we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. Your site's overall robots.txt error rate is 100.0%.

As I looked at history, my SmugMug site has NEVER been recognized. What am I doing wrong?

Ricks-Photography

Got a sitemap question? Look here.

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