What's wrong with my sitemap?

Question

Hi,

We have a sitemap for our site http://www.appsamuck.com/

The sitemap is here http://www.appsamuck.com/sitemap.xml

But Google seems to hate it. My question is why? I'm just staring at it now saying to myself it looks right. Am I missing something?

3 Paths don't match We've detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that doesn't include the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap do use the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/myfile.htm). Help Help URL: Problem detected on: http://www.appsamuck.com/ Oct 15, 2008

Answer 1

I've encountered similar problems. Just resubmit the same map. Often the warnings go away.

Try adding the other fields: <lastmod></lastmod>, <changefreq></changefreq>, <priority></priority>. Your site map looks correct.

Also, make sure the status of your resubmitted map is not "pending". Google sometimes takes hours to getting around to processing your files.

Answer 2

This could have to do with your preferred domain setting. If your sitemap has www's in it, but you submitted the site without the www, then it could cause the confusion. What I did for my sites was to submit it with the wwww in the sitemap, and make sure I submitted to Google in Webmaster tools the same way.

Then you can go in and set the "Preferred Domain" in the Tools area for your site. From there, you can have Google only link to the non www version if you want.

Answer 3

I just typed a huge response and FF crashed and I lost it I hate it when that happens!!

Basically its possible to have two sites with different content, one running under www. and one without the www a bit like a subdomain. Because of this when you submitted your sitemap google sees its on the www site (http://www.appsamuck.com/sitemap.xml) but all the urls in your sitemap do not contain the www, therefore google is wondering if the sitemap is actually for another site the non www section. Usually these two deliver the same content but not always, so google is saying hang on you put the sitemap at www, but all your pages are on a non www domain whats that about!!

The best thing to do is stick to one or the other, are you advertising the www or non www? Whichever you are using (and I suggest the www version), submit your sitemap with www and make sure all your urls in your sitemap have www in them. That way google wont throw a fit. Also sticking to one may be slightly better for SEO.

As Nick suggested above, its also a good idea to let google know which one you prefer through the preferred domain option. I would set this option

Display URLs as www.appsamuck.com (for both www.appsamuck.com and appsamuck.com)

At least google will know that your talking about the same site then.

As for the sitemap, well there are some issues with that too. Firstly as I pointed out about its missing the www from each URL. Secondly you are missing an xml declaration etc for the top of the file. YOu need something like this

print("code sample");<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset
  xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
        http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd"&gt;

Like Diodeus above suggested you really should add the other fields in such as priority etc.

Here is a quick go I have done for you (note it follows on from the above as I have opened the urlset tag above and it closes at the bottom of this set of code)

print("code sample");
 <url>
  <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/&lt;/loc&gt;
  <priority>1.00</priority>
  <lastmod>2008-10-17T03:01:05+00:00</lastmod>
  <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
 <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/index.html&lt;/loc&gt;
  <priority>0.80</priority>
  <lastmod>2008-10-17T03:01:05+00:00</lastmod>
  <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/blog/&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/about.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-16T00:00:32+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/contact.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-16T00:00:33+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/iphonesdkdev.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-14T05:41:03+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/day16.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-17T03:13:21+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/day15.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-16T15:58:57+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/day14.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-15T16:58:06+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
 <url>
   <loc>http://www.appsamuck.com/day13.html&lt;/loc&gt;
   <priority>0.80</priority>
   <lastmod>2008-10-13T17:52:08+00:00</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
 </url>
</urlset>

Its not a full list im not going to do all the work for you :)

There are also some good online tools that will create sitemaps for you, they crawl the site and build it, just google xml-sitemaps and you should find some, there are some good free ones. Also if their spider cannot find your content its a flag that google probably cannot either,so it has a dual purpose.

Hope that helps :) Paul

Answer 4

I found a similiar problem today. What I did was recreate site without the www. Google usually suggest you to create your site as htttp://www.yoursitename.com but you can also enter htttp:// yoursitename. com and the verify that you are the administrator. it workd well for me. Hope this helps : Leo from http://www.thesuccesspoint.com