My sitemap in Google is coming back with an error
-
I submitted my xml sitemap to Google Webmaster tools. It is giving an error, not found. 404 Error. But I can't figure out why my site map is signaling a 404. Why?
-
It's always a good idea to include the directive in the robots.txt anyway, Courtney, so I'd say yes.
If typing the address in your browser works, but putting in that exact same address in GWT results in 404, then I'm stumped. Only thing i can figure is your WMT is experiencing a glitch and you might want o report it in the Google Webmaster forums.
If you want to send the site URL by personal message here I can take a last look.
Paul
-
The address does work in typed into the browser. And I did use an installed plugin to create the sitemap.
So if the address works, do you think my next step is to add the robots.txt?
Courtney
-
Just because your site has a sitemap doesn't mean it's guaranteed to be located at www/yoursite.com/sitemap.xml, Courteney. What happens when you actually type www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml in your browser's address bar? I'm betting you'll get a 404, which means your sitemap isn't located/named what you think it is.
Many WordPress plugins that automatically create xml sitemaps don't put them in the expected standard location with the standard file name! For example, Yoast's WordPress SEO plugin creates its xml sitemap at www.yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. It looks close, but its not the same.
Double check the sitemap plugin you're using to confirm where it's writing the xml file and then use that address to submit it to both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.
It's also best practice to add a directive to the robots.txt file at the root of your site pointing to the correct sitemap.xml location as well. Just add this line at the bottom:
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/actualsitemapfilename.xml
That address'll be the same one that you were able to successfully submit to GWT.
Does all that make sense?
Paul
P.S. One extra thought, since you mention that this is your first WordPress build. WP doesn't automatically create an xml sitemap for you - you'll have to have installed a plugin or used a 3rd-party tool to do that for you. Sorry if that's obvious to you, but wanted to cover all the bases
-
I agree if the page is live in your browser (xml version) then Google should be able to crawl it.
-
Hi Courtney,
Are you suggesting that the sitemap itself is 404ing OR webmasters is in indicating your site has 404's of page that exist on your sitemap?
If it's the sitemap itself, can you navigate to it directly? Does it render in a browser?
If it's an error from a page on the sitemap, and the page currently renders there is a good chance it didn't at some stage. If that's the case you can ask google to recrawl it as an individual page, see;
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1352276
Hope this helps.
Dan
-
It is the .xml. Any other ideas? Totally stuck....(first wordpress site I have built)
-
You have to submit the .XML version and it has to be live in your directory on your server.
on our site ie:
The page for users: http://www.boastingbiz.com/sitemap
The page for the Spiders: http://www.boastingbiz.com/sitemap.xml <--- Submit the .xml from wherever you place it on your server.
hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
GMB Bulk Upload Error
Hello! I am continuing to have issues with the bulk upload option.Currently, there are 12 non-verified locations in a location group in my GMB account. I have approximately 6-8 more that need to be added to this group via bulk upload. When uploading the spreadsheet, I receive an error reading "You've exceeded the limit for the about of locations you can upload to Google My Business in a single day. Try again later." It seems to happen specifically to the locations that aren't in my GMB account already. The others, the ones already in the account, are fine and simply read "No updates" when the bulk upload sheet is read. Everything else is marked as an error. Why is it marking some listings as nonviable when they come in via the bulk verification spreadsheet, which has been downloaded directly from the links Google has provided, and filled in with the help of the sample and amenities list?How do we finish uploading all of the remaining locations?I have another group, separate group (same company, groups split into US and International) under my name that may also need a bulk upload - what can I do to avoid this error in the future? Can they still be bulk uploaded to my account after I upload the first location group's listings?If you could provide any guidance, I'd be very grateful.Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | kmarsh0 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?ecaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Sitemap links
Hi, I´m running a sitemap using pro-sitemaps and I find several pages that shouldn´t be listed. How do I find how are these pages being generated? Can´t find the links the robot is following to get to those pages..
Technical SEO | | ceci27100 -
XML Sitemap Creation
I am looking for a tool where I can add a list of URL's and output an XML sitemap. Ideally this would be Web based or work on the mac? Extra bonus if it handles video sitemaps. My alternative is XLS and a bunch of concatenates, but I'd rather something cleaner. It doesn't need to crawl the site. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Jeff_Lucas0 -
404 Errors & Redirection
Hi, I'm working with someone who recently had two websites redesigned. The old permalink structure consisted of domain/year/month/date/post-name. Their developer changed the new permalink structure to domain/post-name, but apparently he didn't redirect the old URLs to the new ones so we're finding that links from external sites result in 404 errors (once I remove the date in the URL, the links work fine). Each site has 3-4 years worth of blog posts, so there are quite a few that would need to be changed. I was thinking of using the Redirection plugin - would that be the best way to fix this sitewide on both sites?Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Carolina
Technical SEO | | csmm0 -
What if 404 Error not possible?
Hi Everyone, I get an 404 error in my page if the URL is simply wrong, but for some parameters, like if a page has been deleted, or has expired, I get an error page indicating that the ID is wrong, but no 404 error. It is for me very difficult to program a function in php that solve the problem and modify the .htaccess with the mod_rewrite. I ask the developer of the system to give a look, but I am not sure if I will get an answer soon. I can control the content of the deleted/expired page, but the URL will be very similar to those that are ok (actually the url could has been fine, but now expired). Thinking of solutions I can set the expired/deleted pages as noindex, would it help to avoid duplicated title/description/content problem? If an user goes to i.e., mywebsite.com/1-article/details.html I can set the head section to noindex if it has expired. Would it be good enough? Other question, is it possible anyhow to set the pages as 404 without having to do it directly in the .htacess, so avoiding the mod_rewrite problems that I am having? Some magical tag in the head section of the page? Many thanks in advance for your help, Best Regards, Daniel
Technical SEO | | te_c0 -
XML Sitemap Issue or not?
Hi Everyone, I submitted a sitemap within the google webmaster tools and I had a warning message of 38 issues. Issue: Url blocked by robots.txt. Description: Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt. Example: the ones that were given were urls that we don't want them to be indexed: Sitemap: www.example.org/author.xml Value: http://www.example.org/author/admin/ My issue here is that the number of URL indexed is pretty low and I know for a fact that Robot.txt aren't good especially if they block URL that needs to be indexed. Apparently the URLs that are blocked seem to be URLs that we don't to be indexed but it doesn't display all URLs that are blocked. Do you think i m having a major problem or everything is fine?What should I do? How can I fix it? FYI: Wordpress is what we use for our website Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tay19860 -
Google Shopping Australia/Google Merchant Centre
So Google Shopping has finally landed in Australia so we've got some work todo hooking it up to our client ecom sites. Right now we have a handful of clients who are setup, the feed is getting in their ok but all products are sitting in "disapproved" status in the dashboard and clicking into each individual product the status says awaiting review. I logged a support ticket with Google to get some more info on this as it doesn't look right to me (ie the disapproved status in dashboard) and got a useless templated answer. Seems that if I switch the country destination to US the products are approved and live in google.com shopping search within the hour. Switch back to Australia and they go back to disapproved status. Anyone having the same issue/seen this before? I simply don't trust Google support and wondering if there's other factors at play here.
Technical SEO | | Brendo0