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.
Pending Sitemaps
-
Hi, all
Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it.
My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link)
https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml
https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml
I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up.
Many thanks,
Jeff
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
-
Why do people put xml sitemaps in subfolders? Why not just the root? What's the best solution?
Just read this: "The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/." here: http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#location Yet surely it's better to put the sitemaps at the root so you have:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
(a) http://example.com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml
http://example.com/sitemap-spongecakes.xml
and so on... OR this kind of approach -
(b) http://example/com/sitemap.xml
http://example.com/sitemap/chocolatecakes.xml and
http://example.com/sitemap/spongecakes.xml I would tend towards (a) rather than (b) - which is the best option? Also, can I keep the structure the same for sitemaps that are subcategories of other sitemaps - for example - for a subcategory of http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes.xml I might create http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes-cherryicing.xml - or should I add a sub folder to turn it into http://example.com/sitemap-chocolatecakes/cherryicing.xml Look forward to reading your comments - Luke0 -
Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?
I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
Sitemap generator which only includes canonical urls
Does anyone know of a 3rd party sitemap generator that will only include the canonical url's? Creating a sitemap with geo and sorting based parameters isn't the most ideal way to generate sitemaps. Please let me know if anyone has any ideas. Mind you we have hundreds of thousands of indexed url's and this can't be done with a simple text editor.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
Do you suggest I use the Yoast or the Google XML sitemap for my blog?
I just shut off the All-In-One seo pack plugin for wordpress, and turned on the Yoast plugin. It's great! So much helpful, seo boosting info! So, in watching a video on how to configure the plugin, it mentions that I should update the sitemap, using the Yoast sitemap I'm afraid to do this, because I'm pretty technologically behind... I see I have a Google XML Sitemaps (by Arne Brachhold) plugin turned on (and have had it for many years). Should I leave this one on? Or would you recommend going through the steps to use the Yoast plugin sitemap? If so, what are the benefits of the Yoast plugin, over the Google XML? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidC.0 -
<loc>tag empty in sitemap, is this ok?</loc>
Hi - our website's sitemap is pretty huge, and I'm trying to generate it with the hreflang= information in it, because we have 11 different language sites all under the .com. I used the Media Flow generator for this purpose, but it returned a lot of entries with a blank tag. Our U.S. website by far has the most pages, so an example of what I'm getting is: Does this look correct???? Doesn't to me but I'm unsure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
What Happens If a Hreflang Sitemap Doesn't Include Every Language for Missing Translated Pages?
As we are building a hreflang sitemap for a client, we are correctly implementing the tag across 5 different languages including English. However, the News and Events section was never translated into any of the other four languages. There are also a few pages that were translated into some but not all of the 4 languages. Is it good practice to still list out the individual non-translated pages like on a regular sitemap without a hreflang tag? Should the hreflang sitemap include the hreflang tag with pages that are missing a few language translations (when one or two language translations may be missing)? We are uncertain if this inconsistency would create a problem and we would like some feedback before pushing the hreflang sitemap live.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Should I redirect my xml sitemap?
Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
302 redirects in the sitemap?
My website uses a prefix at the end to instruct the back-end about visitor details. The setup is similar to this site - http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=sf with a 302 redirect from the normal link to the one with additional info and a canonical tag on the actual URL without the extra info ((the normal one here being http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com,) However, when I used www.xml-sitemaps.com to create a sitemap they did so using the URLs with the extra info on the links... what should I do to create a sitemap using the normal URLs (which are the ones I want to be promoting)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0