Image Sitemap Indexing Issue

[CorbisVeer]

Hello Folks,

I've been running into some strange issues with our XML Sitemaps.

1. 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!

[CorbisVeer]

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!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

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.

[CommercePundit]

@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?

7400994578_b34fd62c18_b.jpg

[Cyrus-Shepard]

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.

[CorbisVeer]

Hi Folks,

Just following up on this query. Any insights? Thank you for your help!

-Corbis