Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Google Not Indexing XML Sitemap Images

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Google Not Indexing XML Sitemap Images

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    17
    14189
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • edlondon
      edlondon last edited by

      Hi Mozzers,

      We are having an issue with our XML sitemap images not being indexed.

      The site has over 39,000 pages and 17,500 images submitted in GWT.  If you take a look at the attached screenshot, 'GWT Images - Not Indexed', you can see that the majority of the pages are being indexed - but none of the images are.

      The first thing you should know about the images is that they are hosted on a content delivery network (CDN), rather than on the site itself. However, Google advice suggests hosting on a CDN is fine - see second screenshot, 'Google CDN Advice'.  That advice says to either (i) ensure the hosting site is verified in GWT or (ii) submit in robots.txt.  As we can't verify the hosting site in GWT, we had opted to submit via robots.txt.

      There are 3 sitemap indexes: 1) http://www.greenplantswap.co.uk/sitemap_index.xml, 2) http://www.greenplantswap.co.uk/sitemap/plant_genera/listings.xml and 3) http://www.greenplantswap.co.uk/sitemap/plant_genera/plants.xml.

      Each sitemap index is split up into often hundreds or thousands of smaller XML sitemaps. This is necessary due to the size of the site and how we have decided to pull URLs in.  Essentially, if we did it another way, it may have involved some of the sitemaps being massive and thus taking upwards of a minute to load.

      To give you an idea of what is being submitted to Google in one of the sitemaps, please see view-source:http://www.greenplantswap.co.uk/sitemap/plant_genera/4/listings.xml?page=1.

      Originally, the images were SSL, so we decided to reverted to non-SSL URLs as that was an easy change.  But over a week later, that seems to have had no impact.  The image URLs are ugly... but should this prevent them from being indexed?

      The strange thing is that a very small number of images have been indexed - see http://goo.gl/P8GMn. I don't know if this is an anomaly or whether it suggests no issue with how the images have been set up - thus, there may be another issue.

      Sorry for the long message but I would be extremely grateful for any insight into this.  I have tried to offer as much information as I can, however please do let me know if this is not enough.

      Thank you for taking the time to read and help.

      Regards,

      Mark

      Oz6HzKO rYD3ICZ

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • bogdan_c
        bogdan_c @edlondon last edited by

        Hi Mark,

        I'm just following the thread as I have a similar problem. Would you mind sharing your results from the tests?

        Thanks,
        Bogdan

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • edlondon
          edlondon @Everett last edited by

          Thanks Everett - that's exactly what I intend to do.

          We will be testing two new sitemaps with 100 x URLs each. 1. With just the file extension removed and 2. With the entire cropping part of the URL removed, as suggested by Matt.

          Will be interested to see whether just one or both of the sitemaps are successful.  Will of course post the outcome here, for anyone who might have this problem in future.

          bogdan_c 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Everett
            Everett @edlondon last edited by

            It isn't always that simple. Maybe commas don't present a problem on their own. Maybe double file extensions don't present a problem on their own. Maybe a CDN doesn't present a problem on its own. Maybe very long, complicated URLs don't present a problem on their own.

            You have all of these. Together, in any combination, they could make indexation of your images a problem for Google.

            Just test it out on a few. Get rid of the file extension. If that doesn't work, get rid of the comma. That is all you can do. Start with whatever is easiest for the developer to implement, and test it out on a few before rolling it out across all of your images.

            edlondon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • edlondon
              edlondon @mattbeswick last edited by

              Cheers for that mate - especially the useful Excel formula.

              I am going to try a few things in isolation so that we can accurately say which element/s caused the issue.

              Thanks again, mate.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • mattbeswick
                mattbeswick @edlondon last edited by

                Ignore the developer - what worked for one doesn't mean it'll work for you 😉

                The easiest way to test this is to manually create a sitemap with 100 or so 'clean' image URLs. Just pull the messy ones into excel and use the formula below to create a clean version (Use A1 for messy, B1 for formula).

                Good luck mate.

                =CONCATENATE("image:imageimage:lochttp://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/",RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-(FIND("",(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"/","",(IF(LEN(TRIM(A1))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A1))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"/",""))))))))),"</image:loc></image:image>")

                edlondon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • edlondon
                  edlondon @Everett last edited by

                  Thanks for the responses guys, much appreciated.

                  In terms of the commas, that was something that I put to the developer, however he was able to come back with examples where this has clearly not been an issue - e.g. apartable.com have commas in their URLs and use the same CDN (Coudinary).

                  However, I agree with you that double file extension could be the issue.  I may have to wait until next week to find out as the developer is working on another project, but will post the outcome here once I know.

                  Thank you again for the help!

                  mattbeswick Everett 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • Everett
                    Everett @edlondon last edited by

                    Hello Edlondon,

                    I think you're probably answering your own question here. Google typically doesn't have any problem indexing images served from a CDN. However, I've seen Google have problems with commas in the URL at times. Typically it happens when other elements in the URL are also troublesome, such as your double file extension.

                    Are you able to rename the files to get rid of the superfluous .jpg extension? If so, I'd recommend trying it out on a few dozen images. We could come up with a lot of hypothesis, but that would be the one I'd test first.

                    edlondon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • FedeEinhorn
                      FedeEinhorn @edlondon last edited by

                      Hmmm I step off here, never used cloudinary.com or even heard of them. I personally use NetDNA, with pull zones (which means that they load the image/css/js from your origin and store a version on their servers) while handling cropping/resizing from my own end (via PHP and then loading that image, example: http://cdn.fulltraffic.net/blog/thumb/58x58/youtube-video-xQmQeKU25zg.jpg try changing the 58x58 to another size and my server will handle the crop/resize while NetDNA will serve it and store for future loads).

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • edlondon
                        edlondon @mattbeswick last edited by

                        Found one of the sites with the same Cloudinary URLs with commas - apartable.com

                        See Google image results: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:apartable.com&tbm=isch

                        Their images appear to be well indexed.  One thing I have noticed, however, is that we often have .jpg twice in the image URL.  E.g.:

                        • http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/c_crop,g_north,h_0.9,w_1.0/c_fill,d_no_image_icon-720x720**.jpg**,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_900/v1352574983/oyfos82vwvmxdx91hxaw**.jpg**
                        • http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/c_crop,g_north,h_0.9,w_1.0/c_fill,d_no_image_icon-720x720**.jpg**,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_900/v1352574989/s09cv3krfn7gbyvw3r2y**.jpg**
                        • http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/c_crop,g_north,h_0.9,w_1.0/c_fill,d_no_image_icon-720x720**.jpg**,g_center,h_407,q_80,w_407/v1352575010/rl7cl4xi0timza1sgzxj**.jpg**

                        Wonder if that is confusing Google?  If so, none of this is consistent, as they do have a few images indexed with exactly the same kind of URL as those listed above.

                        FedeEinhorn Everett 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • edlondon
                          edlondon @mattbeswick last edited by

                          Thought I had them on email but must be within our fairly cumbersome Skype thread... let me have a dig through when I get chance and I'll post them up here.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • mattbeswick
                            mattbeswick @edlondon last edited by

                            Hmmmm, okay... Could you post the examples they gave, and an example page where the images are located on the site?

                            edlondon 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • edlondon
                              edlondon @mattbeswick last edited by

                              Hi Matt,

                              Thought I should let you know that (i) the X-Robots-Tag was not set, so that's not the issue and (ii) the URLs, although ugly, are not the issue either. We had a couple of examples of websites with the same thing (I'm told the commas facilitate on-the-fly sizing and cropping) and their images were indexed fine.

                              So, back to the drawing board for me! Thank you very much for the suggestions, really do appreciate it.

                              Mark

                              mattbeswick 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • edlondon
                                edlondon @mattbeswick last edited by

                                Hmm interesting - we hadn't thought of the X-Robots-Tag http header. I'm going to fire that over to the developer now.

                                As for the URLs, they are awful! But I am told that this is not a problem - but perhaps this is worth re-chasing up as other solutions have, so far, been unfruitful.

                                Thanks for taking the time to help, Matt - I'll let you know if that fixes it!  Unfortunately it could be another week before I know, as the developer is currently working on another project so any changes may be early-mid next week.

                                Thanks again...

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • mattbeswick
                                  mattbeswick last edited by

                                  This is a bit of a long shot but if the files have been uploaded using their API it may have been that the 'X-Robots-Tag' http header is set to no-index...

                                  Also, those URLs don't look great with the commas in them. Have you tried doing a small subset that just has the image id (e.g. http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/nprvu0z6ri227cgnpmqc.jpg)?

                                  Matt

                                  edlondon 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • edlondon
                                    edlondon @FedeEinhorn last edited by

                                    Hi Federico,

                                    Thanks very much for taking the time to respond.

                                    To answer your question, we are using http://cloudinary.com/.  So, taking one of the examples from the XML sitemap I posted above, an example of an image URL is http://res.cloudinary.com/greenplantswap/image/upload/c_crop,g_north,h_0.9,w_1.0/c_fill,d_no_image_icon-720x720.jpg,g_center,h_900,q_80,w_900/v1352575097/nprvu0z6ri227cgnpmqc.jpg (what a lovely URL!).

                                    I had a look at http://res.cloudinary.com/robots.txt and it seems that they are not blocking anything - the disallow instruction is commented out.  I assume that is indeed the robots.txt I should be looking at?

                                    Assuming it is, this does not appear to get to the bottom of why the images are not being indexed.

                                    Any further assistance would be greatly appreciated - we have 17k unique images that could be driving traffic and this is a key way that people find our kind of website.

                                    Thanks,

                                    Mark

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • FedeEinhorn
                                      FedeEinhorn last edited by

                                      Within that robot.txt file on the CDN (which one are you using?) have you set to allow Google to index them?

                                      Most CDNs I know allows you to block engines via the robots.txt to avoid bandwidth consumption.

                                      In the case you are using NetDNA (MaxCDN) or the like, make sure your robots file isn't disallowing robots to crawl.

                                      We are using a CDN too to deliver images and static files and all of them are being indexed, we tested disallowing crawlers but it caused a lot of warnings, so instead we no allow all of them to read and index content (is a small price to pay to have your content indexed).

                                      Hope that helps!

                                      edlondon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                      • 1 / 1
                                      • First post
                                        Last post

                                      Got a burning SEO question?

                                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                      Start my free trial


                                      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.

                                      • See all categories

                                      Related Questions

                                      • Asmi-Ta

                                        Staging website got indexed by google

                                        indexing crawling noindex

                                        Our staging website got indexed by google and now MOZ is showing all inbound links from staging site, how should i remove those links and make it no index. Note- we already added Meta NOINDEX in head tag

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Asmi-Ta
                                        0
                                      • Davit1985

                                        My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!

                                        Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found  on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit1985
                                        0
                                      • cuarto715

                                        Google Is Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites

                                        Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto715
                                        0
                                      • RosemaryB

                                        Is possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?

                                        We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
                                        0
                                      • khi5

                                        Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?

                                        If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
                                        0
                                      • webestate

                                        How to get content to index faster in Google.....pubsubhubbub?

                                        I'm curious to know what tools others are using to get their content to index faster (other than html sitmap and pingomatic, twitter, etc) Would installing the wordpress pubsubhubbub plugin help even though it uses pingomatic? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pubsubhubbub/

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate
                                        0
                                      • dbfrench

                                        Site Indexed by Google but not Bing or Yahoo

                                        Hi, I have a site that is indexed (and ranking very well) in Google, but when I do a "site:www.domain.com" search in Bing and Yahoo it is not showing up.  The team that purchased the domain a while back has no idea if it was indexed by Bing or Yahoo at the time of purchase.  Just wondering if there is anything that might be preventing it from being indexed?  Also, Im going to submit an index request, are there any other things I can do to get it picked up?

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dbfrench
                                        0
                                      • corwin

                                        Image Maps

                                        Hey forum, I'm curious about Image Maps. Few things I'm not sure about: 1. Will the links be followed? If so, will Google respect rel="nofollow"? 2. Will the image be considered 1 image? (indexed as image, etc.) Or will each map segment be treated as a separate image? 3. Any other SEO pros\cons to consider when adding an image map to an existing page? Thanks, Corwin.

                                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin
                                        0

                                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                      Start my free trial
                                      Products
                                      • Moz Pro
                                      • Moz Local
                                      • Moz API
                                      • Moz Data
                                      • STAT
                                      • Product Updates
                                      Moz Solutions
                                      • SMB Solutions
                                      • Agency Solutions
                                      • Enterprise Solutions
                                      Free SEO Tools
                                      • Domain Authority Checker
                                      • Link Explorer
                                      • Keyword Explorer
                                      • Competitive Research
                                      • Brand Authority Checker
                                      • Local Citation Checker
                                      • MozBar Extension
                                      • MozCast
                                      Resources
                                      • Blog
                                      • SEO Learning Center
                                      • Help Hub
                                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                      • How-to Guides
                                      • Moz Academy
                                      • API Docs
                                      About Moz
                                      • About
                                      • Team
                                      • Careers
                                      • Contact
                                      Why Moz
                                      • Case Studies
                                      • Testimonials
                                      Get Involved
                                      • Become an Affiliate
                                      • MozCon
                                      • Webinars
                                      • Practical Marketer Series
                                      • MozPod
                                      Connect with us

                                      Contact the Help team

                                      Join our newsletter
                                      Moz logo
                                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                      • Accessibility
                                      • Terms of Use
                                      • Privacy

                                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.