Image Sitemap Indexing Issue
-
Hello Folks,
I've been running into some strange issues with our XML Sitemaps.
- The XML Sitemaps won't open on a browser and it throws the following error instead of opening the XML Sitemap. Sample XML Sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gzError - "XML Parsing Error: no element foundLocation: http://www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xmlLine Number 1, Column 1:"2) Image files are not getting indexed. For instance, the sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gz has 6,000 URLs and 6,000 Images. However, only 3,481 URLs and 25 images are getting indexed. The sitemap formatting seems good, but I can't figure out why Google's de-indexing the images and only 50-60% of the URLs are getting indexed. Thank you for your help!
-
Hi Cyrus,
Thank you for your note and my apologies for delay in response.
The indexation number is from Google Webmaster Tools.
The two are identical and I've tested other XML sitemap files that are in GZ format that opened fine in the browser without unzipping them or prompting a DL. The sitemaps were uploaded to GWT as the .gz files only since we have many pages to upload.
I'll check with our Dev Team regarding the XML parsing error.
Please let me know what other areas we need to look into based my answers to your questions. Thank you for your help, I greatly appreciate it!
-
Some possible suggestions:
- Make sure every image has a width and height attribute defined in the HTML. Images are much more likely to be indexed this way.
- Same with the "alt" attribute
- Make sure your image subdirectory isn't blocked (robots.txt for example)
- Same with the pages
It may be Google actually is indexing those images, but not reporting them in GWT. Do an image search and narrow results to your site, to see if your images actually appear.
Aside from accessibility issues, make sure the images are on well-linked to pages. It's much more likely for an image to be indexed on a page with good link metrics and a lack of crawl problems.
-
@Cyrus
You have given very good explanation. But, I have similar issue for image sitemap. If we are talking about crawling & indexing ratio so, it's quite good. You can know more by attachment.
You can check syntax of image sitemap by following XML.
http://www.vistastores.com/patio_umbrellas_sitemap.xml
Can you give me input ::: How can I improve crawling and indexing for images?
-
Hi Corbis,
Man, you've got some tough questions! i may have to call in some outside support on this one if we can't figure it out.
First of all, are you getting the indexation #s from Google Webmaster Tools? What I mean by this - is Google saying there are 6000 URLs in your sitemap, but they are only indexing 3,481?
When I unzipped the compressed sitemap file, it opened fine in my browser, while the 2nd uncompressed file did not. Are they identical? And have you submitted both to Google?
There could be many reasons why you're getting the XML parsing error. One issue might be in the second line, referencing http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1/ as a Schema location, because this is an html webpage and not an XML or DTD file. You might try removing the reference to this URL, and see if that helps.
Otherwise, if Google is reporting the correct number of URLs and Images, then you know they are aware of those URLs, and the problem may not be with the sitemap. Google doesn't necessarily index all URLs in a sitemap, but instead bases it's indexing on factors like your domain authority, link structure and crawl allowance. Addressing these issues will usually help get more pages indexed than a sitemap alone.
So if you can improve internal crawl errors, duplicate content issues, and make sure there is a good navigational architecture to your site, you should see a good rise in indexations.
-
Hi Folks,
Just following up on this query. Any insights? Thank you for your help!
-Corbis
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
-
Google indexing is slowing down?
I have up to 20 million unique pages, and so far I've only submitted about 30k of them on my sitemap. We had a few load related errors during googles initial visits, and it thought some were duplicates, but we fixed all that. We haven't gotten a crawl related error for 2 weeks now. Google appears to be indexing fewer and fewer urls every time it visits. Any ideas why? I am not sure how to get all our pages indexed if its going to operate like this... love some help thanks! HnJaXSM.png
Technical SEO | | RyanTheMoz0 -
Sitemap.gz is being indexed and is showing up in SERP instead of actual pages.
Sitemap.gz is being indexed and is showing up in SERP instead of actual pages. I recently uploaded my sitemap file - https://psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap-index.xml - via Search Console. The only record within the XML file is sitemaps.gz. When I searched for some content on my site - here is the search https://goo.gl/mqxBeq - I was shown the following search result, indicating that our GZ file is getting indexed instead of our pages. http://www.psglearning.com/catalog 1 http://www.psglearning.com ...www.psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap.gz... 1 https://www.psglearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284059656/ 1 https://www.psglearning.com/catalog/productdetails/9781284060454/ 1 ... My sitemap is listed at https://psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap-index.xml inside the sitemap the only reference is to sitemap.gz. Should we remove the link the the sitemap.gz within the xml file and just serve the actual page paths? <sitemapindex< span=""> xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"></sitemapindex<><sitemap></sitemap>https://www.psglearning.com/sitemapcustom/sitemap.gz<lastmod></lastmod>2017-06-12T09:41-04:00
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
Advice for rapidly declining ranking-- can an old indexed sitemap cause this?
Hi Everyone, Today, I woke up to a dramatic page rank decline (nearly 20 positions) for a client's website (eacoe.org). When I looked in Webmaster tools, I noticed that the site was just indexed yesterday by Google (a request that the webmaster had submitted back in April of this year). Would this re-indexing event have caused the sharp decline? In Webmaster Tools, I don't see many errors (one 404 error that we are planning on fixing). I likewise see no Manual Actions/ penalties brought up by Google about our site. My first concern is that the re-indexing led to rank decline, but I'm not entirely sure if I should be focusing on something else. And if it is the re-indexing, what are there any recommended steps of attack? Thanks for your help! -Bruce
Technical SEO | | dynedge0 -
Images on Website for SEO
Good Morning, We have a magento website with hundreds of different products that have slight size variations. The image for each of these products looks the same (the only difference between the products is some of the dimensions) .... Would you recommend using the same image for each of these products and just use a generic file name that describes the overall product or would you give each product its own image with it's specific product name as the file name? Should I use 1 image for 500 different sku's or should i rename the file the name of each individual sku and load an individual image? The end user will not know the difference since all of the images will appear identical, simply asking from an SEO perspective. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Should I Edit Sitemap Before Submitting to GWMT?
I use the XML sitemap generator at http://www.auditmypc.com/xml-sitemap.asp and use the filter that forces the tool to respect robots.txt exclusions. This generator allows me to review the entire sitemap before downloading it. Depending on the site, I often see all kinds of non-content files still listed on the sitemap. My question is, should I be editing the sitemap to remove every file listed except ones I really want spidered, or just ignore them and let the Google spiderbot figure it all out after I upload-submit the XML?
Technical SEO | | DonB0 -
Modx revolution- getting around index.php vs. root duplicate content issue?
Basically, SEOMoz bots are flagging our index.php and root files as duplicate content of one another, therefore cutting the page authority of each. What we want to do is make the root the canonical preference over index.php. Ordinarily, we should be able to do this in the htaccess file. For some reason, as the site has been built into a cms using ModX Revolution, this does not seem to work. We've tried A TON of htaccess rewrite mods to resolve this issue to no avail. We have also tried revising our sitemap to include only the root address. Any ideas? We'll try most anything at this point. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | G2W0 -
What to do with 302 redirects being indexed
Hi there, Our site's forums include permalinks that for some reason uses an intermediary URL that 302 redirects to the URL with the permalink anchor. For example: http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/ In the comments, there is a permalink to the following URL; en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/ (there is no content here, and never has been). This URL 302 redirects to the following final URL: http://en.tradimo.com/learn/chart-analysis/time-frames/?offset=0&limit=20#50c450005f2b949e3200001b The problem is, Google is indexing the redirect URL (en.tradimo.com/co/50c450005f2b949e3200001b/) and showing duplicate content even though we are using the nofollow tag on these links. Ideally, we would directly use the last link rather than redirecting. Alternatively, I'd say a 301 redirect would be preferable. But if both aren't available, is there a way to get these pages out of the index? Is the canonical tag the best way? I really wish I could just add /co/ to the robots.txt file, but I think they would still be in the index, right? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | etruvian0