My sitemap in Google is coming back with an error

[cschwartzel]

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?

[ThompsonPaul]

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

[cschwartzel]

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

[ThompsonPaul]

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

[Bryan_Loconto]

I agree if the page is live in your browser (xml version) then Google should be able to crawl it.

[djlaidler]

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

[cschwartzel]

It is the .xml. Any other ideas? Totally stuck....(first wordpress site I have built)

[Bryan_Loconto]

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.