Sitemaps - Format Issue

[ShaMenz]

Hi,

I have a little issue with a client site whose programmer seems kind of unwilling to change things that he has been doing a long time.

So, he has had this dynamic site set up for a few years and active in google webmaster tools and others, but is not happy with the traffic it is getting.

When I looked at webmaster tools I see that he has a sitemap registered, but it is /sitemap.php

When I said that we should be offering the SE's /sitemap.xml his response is that sitemap.php checks the site every day and generates /sitemap.xml, but there is no /sitemap.xml registered in webmaster tools.

My gut is telling me that he should just register /sitemap.xml in webmaster tools, but it is a hard sell

Anyone have any definitive experience of people doing this before and whether it is an issue?

My feeling is that it doesn't need to be rocket science...

Any input appreciated,

Sha

[RyanKent]

I have a sitemap.php on my sites. The file contains the php code which generates my xml sitemap. It is perfectly standard and common practice.

The question for your programmer is, where is the output xml file located? A sitemap program will output the file to the same location each time it is updated. He should be able to provide you a link to the file.

I would advise the URL to be placed somewhere like mydomain.com/sitemap directory. If a deeper directory is preferred, then add the location to robots.txt. Either way it cannot hurt to update the sitemap in Google WMT. With that said, it is not necessary to do so as long as you can confirm Google is getting the information.

[Doc_Sheldon]

I haven't seen a sitemap.php in a long time, Sha. Certainly Google could  read it if they want, but whether they will or not is the question. I would be inclined to doubt it.

If he says that it's generating a sitemap.xml, but none is present on WMT, then I would respond that one of two things is happening:

1. It isn't generating the sitemap in an xml format at all, but only in php, or

2. For some reason, the xml version is either not transmitted, or not received.

The only other possibility that comes to mind is that perhaps the conversion from php to xml is not tagged in a fashion to be recognized as an xml file, and WMT is detecting it as php and assigning it that status accordingly. I suppose that could happen, particularly if he is using an outdated plugin or if of his own coding, the conversion is faulty.

I'd be interested in hearing what you ultimately learn on this.