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
-
Help! How to Remove Error Code 901: DNS Errors (But to a URL that doesn't exist!)
I have 2 urgent errors saying there are 2 x error code 909's detected. These don't link to any page - but I can tell there is a mistake somewhere - I just don't know what needs changing. http://www.justkeyrings.co.ukhttp/www.justkeyrings.co.uk/printed-promotional-keyrings http://www.justkeyrings.co.ukhttp/www.justkeyrings.co.uk/blank-unassembled-keyrings Could someone help please? screen-shot-2015-08-11-at-13.18.17.png?t=1439292942
Technical SEO | | FullSteamBusiness0 -
404 Errors in WMT
Currently my website have about 10,000 404 errors for my site as wordpress is adding /feed/ to the end of all url in my website.. Should I restrict /feed/ from the robot txt?
Technical SEO | | thewebguy30 -
Google Webmasters News Errors ressolution
Hello to the community, i had a sudden increase from just a couple to 50 someting Google Webmaster News Errors. The two areas affected are Content of article and date of article.I found a very good article in SEOMoz about Google Webmasters, but it was published before the changes early last year were done in Google Webmasters. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-errors-in-google-webmaster-tools The people that have been asking the same question in the internet have not yet received replies from Google and the Google support replies dont make it really clear. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93994 Any views experiences with this. My site is in Google News, but we do not have a Google News Sitemap. Thanks, Polar
Technical SEO | | Polarstar0 -
Crawling issues in google
Hi everyone, I think i have crawling issues with one of my sites. It has vanished form Google rankings it used to rank for all services i offered now it doesn't anymore ever since September 29th. I have resubmitted to Google 2 times and they came back with the same answer: " We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the web spam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google. There's no need to file a reconsideration request for your site, because any ranking issues you may be experiencing are not related to a manual action taken by the webspam team. Of course, there may be other issues with your site that affect your site's ranking. Google's computers determine the order of our search results using a series of formulas known as algorithms. We make hundreds of changes to our search algorithms each year, and we employ more than 200 different signals when ranking pages. As our algorithms change and as the web (including your site) changes, some fluctuation in ranking can happen as we make updates to present the best results to our users. If you've experienced a change in ranking which you suspect may be more than a simple algorithm change, there are other things you may want to investigate as possible causes, such as a major change to your site's content, content management system, or server architecture. For example, a site may not rank well if your server stops serving pages to Googlebot, or if you've changed the URLs for a large portion of your site's pages. This article has a list of other potential reasons your site may not be doing well in search. " How i detected that it may be a crawling issue is that 2 weeks ago i changed metas - metas are very slow in getting updated and for some of my pages never did update Do you know any good tools to check for bad code that could slow down the crawling. I really don't know where to look other than issues for crawling. I validated the website with w3c validator and ran xenu and cleaned these up but my website is still down. Any ideas are appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CMTM0 -
How to fix this 404 : Error ( 4XX (Client Error) )
In my report this indicates 404 : Error http://www.thexxxhouse.com/what_sets_us_aparat.html This web page removed from server .How to fix this in SEO friendly way .
Technical SEO | | innofidelity0 -
What to do about Google Crawl Error due to Faceted Navigation?
We are getting many crawl errors listed in Google webmaster tools. We use some faceted navigation with several variables. Google sees these as "500" response code. It looks like Google is truncating the url. Can we tell Google not to crawl these search results using part of the url ("sort=" for example)? Is there a better way to solve this?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0 -
Is this a google dance?
My website keeps moving up and down in ranking but stays within page 2 to 3. Everyday its at a new position.
Technical SEO | | ragivan0 -
WordPress blog and XML sitemap
I have a friend that just spent 15K on a new site and believe it or not the developer did not incorporate a CMS into the site. If a WP blog is built and the URL is added to the site's XML sitemap, for all intensive purposes, would Google view this URL as part of the site in terms of overall number of links, referring domains etc.? The developer is saying that even if the WP URL is added to the XML sitemap, Google will not view this URL as part of the site domain. I cannot think of another way of adding unique content to the site unless the developer is paid to build new pages every month. If the WP blog is not part of the overall domain, then we're left with the URL simply pointing back to the domain with anchor text and such and not adding to the total number of links and RD... ANY THOUGHTS ON THIS WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED! Thanks Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | hawkvt10