FIXED: sitemap not working in Google WMT

1. 70

   Matthew Meyerposted 10 years ago

   There is a known issue that is affecting sitemaps for some accounts.
   The sitemaps should be available for accounts with 10 or more Hubs and questions, but in some cases the URL for the sitemap is returning a 404 code.
   
   Our engineering team is aware of this issue and we are working on a resolution.
   We thank you for your patience.

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   1. 70

      Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Deleted
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         taiwokareemposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         thank you very much Mathew, hope to see it working soon

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   2. 0

      DataEntryTherapyposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Loading problems and issues since yesterday. Is there a problem?
      thank you,

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   3. 70

      Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      The sitemaps are now live, but it does not seem that Google WMT will accept a sitemap that isn't on the same domain as the content.
      I have passed this information on to our engineering team.

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         brakel2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Does this mean the redirects from Squidoo? Is that what you mean about different domain?  Thanks.

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         1. 70

            Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            No. I mean that the sitemap is not on the same domain as your Hubs and as such cannot currently be used with Google WMT.

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               LongTimeMotherposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               I'm pleased I spotted this forum today. Last night on WMT I was thinking i'd have to create a new one because my sitemap couldn't be found. Had decided to leave it until today ... but now I'll just leave it.

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            2. 68

               Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Matt, If Google WMT can't see our sitemap, then how can Google be using it? I'm concerned about this. I just ran a sitemap test in my WMT and it reports "404 not found" detected on Oct 26, 2014 (today).
               
               Google says:
               
               We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

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                  Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  My understanding from our engineering team is that Google can parse the sitemap for SERPs, but that it is not currently working in webmaster tools.

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                     watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     What's a SERP?

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                        Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        It's an acronym that stands for "Search Engine Results Page" - it's where your hubs appear when people search.

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                  2. 68

                     Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     Matt,  Thanks for your reply, but if you read my last post you'll see that I already knew what you said. I know that search engines find the URL of the sitemap in the robots.txt file and they use that sitemap.  But there are additional reasons why we all put the URL of the sitemap in our Webmaster Tools. The problem now is that neither Bing nor Google accept a sitemap that is not in our own directory. So we lose that feature of our webmaster tools. It's not a big loss, but some error reporting is now lost.
                     
                     As you know, Hubpages supports allowing us to specify our webmaster tools for both Bing and Google. So I'm surprised that a decision was made to move the sitemaps into another domain, breaking the feature of Webmaster Tools support of it.

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   4. 70

      Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      We have been working on some outstanding bugs lately and deployed a fix for this issue.
      
      Please try to associate your sitemap with Google Webmaster Tools.
      Let us know if you encounter any errors or other problems.
      
      Thanks for winning a super patient star from me as well
      
      Have a great weekend!

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      1. 68

         Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         This is great news Matt. I'm glad you put our sitemaps back under our subdomains so we can specify them again in WMT. I just added mine back and it tested okay. Of course our hubs that are "Editor's Choice" are not in our personal sitemaps, but that has always been the case and I realize there is no solution to that since they are in the top domain. It was worth the wait.
         
         Please note, however, that tonight there are a number of bugs appearing across HubPages. Since you say you deployed a fix, I wonder if that fix contained changes that brought on the following new bugs... 
         
         • The group maintenance page fails
         • Can't select sub tabs on stats in hubs
         • Some people are reporting failure to leave comments in hubs.

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         1. 70

            Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Glad to hear that it is working again for you!
            We are currently recovering from some issues over the weekend.
            They are not related to the sitemap fix.

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2. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 10 years ago

   Site maps? I had forgotten about those. I just looked at mine. It's there and it is purdy! Any way we can set which hubs are displayed there?

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      Craanposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      What does purdy mean?

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         watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         It's a silly way of saying pretty.

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3. 70

   Maffew Jamesposted 10 years ago

   The sitemap can't be used in Webmaster Tools anymore because it's now on a different domain. Is this going to be fixed at all?

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      Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I have let our engineering team know. So hopefully we can get a fix out soon.
      Thanks for your patience.

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         brakel2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

         My WT is full of connectivity errors, such as site blocking google, 404 and 410 errors, and robots txt file errors.  The dates are from August to September. Do you need screenshots, as I don't have much success? I will try if you need them.

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      2. 80

         TonyPayneposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks Matthew.
         
         While the sitemaps aren't essential for getting hubs indexed, it's still nice to be able to register them with Webmaster Tools so that we can see how the hubs have been indexed.

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4. 85

   rebekahELLEposted 10 years ago

   I can't see mine.

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5. 71

   brakel2posted 10 years ago

   I think someone fixed it quick like bunny. Errors no longer show.

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      rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Mine is still showing a 404 error.  We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

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      tellersposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Nope, still not working over here - getting the "No sitemaps found on this site" error message for the WMT sitemap test.

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6. 71

   brakel2posted 10 years ago

   Could these issues mess up our traffic and be the reason our views are so low?  Maybe tomorrow- Monday- when staff returns things might be clarified.

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      rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I honestly don't know.  I know that Google can crawl our sites without a sitemap if our hubs are indexed, which mine are, except one which isn't featured.  I wonder why there have been so many glitches lately, it would be nice to have some kind of update regarding the site in general.  I have my own opinions as to why traffic has slowed down, but until we know for sure, it's all speculation.  Panda is a site wide penalty.  Subdomains that are holding their own can be less affected, but I think with this last Panda we're seeing effects of a large volume of transferred content from a site that was heavy with affiliate based content.  It may take a few months to see significant change.  My opinion only, from someone who doesn't write online for a profession, but I read a lot to stay in touch with what's happening.

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         brakel2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

         RebekahELLE  Webmaster Tools cannot access the sitemap on mine, and two hubs cannot be found. I have 26 errors but, some may be questions that HubPages deleted for lack of traffic. I too read a lot, rebekahELLE and pay attention to hubbers with authority and the sites they mention. There are so many things in play here: moving the server, migration of new hubs and Panda. I know we are supposed to look at WT for penalties, and I have no penalties. Maybe we will hear more tomorrow. Good luck

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   Lady Loreleiposted 10 years ago

   I haven't a clue what it is supposed to look like so have no idea if it is accurate or not for my accounts. I presume it is because I see the same thing in each account

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8. 99

   watergeekposted 10 years ago

   I just tried it and Google is giving me the 404 Error as well. Do we have any updates on fixes yet?

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9. 71

   brakel2posted 10 years ago

   I think he means there is no fix, so how do we proceed without a site map in WT?

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   1. 68

      Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Matt, please confirm: Are you saying we no longer have individual site maps in our subdomains? If so, please answer brakel2's question. For now, our Google Webmaster Tools will continue to report a problem.

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10. 70

    Maffew Jamesposted 10 years ago

    The sitemaps were relocated to another domain during the server transfer, it would seem. Because Webmaster Tools requires the user submitted sitemap to be on the same domain, it can't be submitted to WT. Google can still locate it through the robots.txt file though. You still have a working sitemap, you just can't look at in your Webmaster Tools account.

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       rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         I have tried looking.  How do you find it?  I can't find one.

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          Maffew Jamesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          http://YOURUSERNAMEHERE.hubpages.com/robots.txt
          
          That is the link Matthew Myer gave earlier that leads you to your robots.txt file. This tells search engines what they can and cannot index, and it can also be used to show search engines where your sitemap is located.
          
          The previous sitemap address you have set up in Webmaster Tools shows a 404 error because it's on a different domain now. You can't set up the new sitemap in Webmaster Tools when it's not on the same domain as your account. Google can still use your sitemap; you just can't view it in Webmaster Tools at the moment.

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    2. 68

       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       I see where mine is also. It's on another domain now. No longer in our subdomain. So I had to delete the sitemap in my Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools. 
       
       Both Google and Bing were reporting not found (404) errors.  I know they will follow the link from robots.txt anyway. But we no longer can verify that the map is set up right.  There was a time a year or two ago when HP messed it up and some of us discovered it only because we were using Webmaster Tools.  So that ability to gone now. Anyway, Thanks, Maffew, for your input on this.

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11. 85

    rebekahELLEposted 10 years ago

    Yes, I've used that URL and all it brings up is a page of HP sites with this forum thread URL at the top of the page.   What am I doing wrong?  I seem to not have one.  I've used various URL's trying to find it including WMT.

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       Maffew Jamesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       You need to put your subdomain name where it says 'yourusernamehere'.
       
       http://rebekahelle.hubpages.com/robots.txt

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          rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks, yes, I've done that but didn't enter it directly into the address bar and entered it into search.
          I finally got the sitemap open!  Thanks!!

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          brakel2posted 10 years agoin reply to this

          Maffew  I found mine. Is it supposed to have the word disallow in various places?

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             Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

             You're looking at your robots.txt file. That has disallows in it to avoid sections you don't want indexed. You'll see your two sitemap links at the top of the file. You have one for your hubs and one of your questions/answers. 
             
             But remember that you can't specify your sitemap this in your Webmaster Tools anymore. Both Google and Bing require it to be in our own subdomain.  I just tried it with Bing tonight and they also will not accept it under hubimg.com, which is where the site maps are now since HubPages moved to a new server.
             
             Don't worry about it though. All search engines find it via the robots.txt file.

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                watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                So what do we use Google Webmaster for now? Anything? Mine is showing 45 hubs indexed, but I have 81 and they're all featured on HP with all above a 70 hubscore.

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                   Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                   You're missing important control of your writing resources if you don't use Webmaster Tools.
                   
                   Webmaster Tools provides many important features that you should be using to monitor the health of your Hubs.
                   
                   • Site messages from Google and Manual Actions.
                   • Search Traffic such as links to your hubs and internal links.
                   • Google index status.
                   • Content keywords.
                   
                   You can also use Webmaster Tools to remove URLs if you plan to move hubs to another site. Although, why would you?

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                   Maffew Jamesposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                   That's an example of a possible use. You have more hubs than what Google has indexed, meaning some of them aren't indexed for some reason. Go to the 'fetch as Google' section, fetch your homepage, then submit for recrawl.
                   
                   After a week, if there are still missing hubs, type in site:yoursubdomainaddress as a Google search, then you can see which are indexed, and thus work out what is still not indexed.

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                      watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                      Now there are 74 indexed and 13 blocked by robots. My first site search showed a couple of my hubs and then a ton of outside sites that apparently have my site link on them. One was a collection of sports games (gambling?) that blocks my entry. Can anyone get into these and tell me what they are and what my hub is doing there? Because that hub is hardly ever read:
                      
                      http://sportsprobably.com/8026/sporting … all-polls/
                      http://sportsusual.com/tag/basketball-scores/
                      http://gregorio.sportschoose.com/tag/al … -football/
                      
                      The hub they're all showing on the search engine is this one:
                      http://watergeek.hubpages.com/hub/Water-Safety-Hazards

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                      1. 68

                         Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                         You need to read through this thread to understand why you are finding these links, and what to do about it: http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/125928
                         
                         And don't post those URLs like you did because you are only helping those crooks. Do as I did on the quote of your comment so it's not an active hyperlink.

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12. 76

    Sabre1000posted 10 years ago

    Still getting this...
    "We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit."
    So I guess it is still not working

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       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       See my explanation earlier in this thread. Here's a direct link to that explanation...
       http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/125898? … ost2665561

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    incomeguruposted 10 years ago

    I submitted http://hubimg.com/sitemaps/hub/current/ … meguru.xml as my sitemap on bing, it wasn’t accepted. Then I tried http://incomeguru.hubpages.com/robots.txt and it was accepted. However, after waiting for some hours I got this message “We weren't able to extract URLs from the sitemap or feed you submitted. Please verify that the sitemap is in a supported format, check it for errors, and resubmit the sitemap”. Is there suggestion on how to correct this error?

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    1. 68

       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       robots.txt is not a sitemap. That's why you received that error. But your sitemap URL is in your robots.txt file. However, you can't specify it in your webmaster tools (Bing or Google) because it's no longer under your own domain. See prior discussion above for a full understanding.

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          Sabre1000posted 10 years agoin reply to this

          So it just doesn't work anymore in Webmaster Tools?
          Then I can quit trying...LOL

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             Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

             That is correct. Unless HP moves the sitemap back into our subdomains, it will not work. But no need to bother with it anyway since Google and Bing can find it via your robots.txt file.

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                Sabre1000posted 10 years agoin reply to this

                Thanks Glenn! You have been very helpful and I appreciate it!

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    incomeguruposted 10 years ago

    Is there no other way to get traffic report in bing webmaster tool?

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       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       Bing webmaster tools provides similar info as Google webmaster tools. You DO get traffic info.

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    watergeekposted 10 years ago

    What is this d*** video ad doing starting up all by itself??? If this continues I'm signing off of all conversations AND hubs the minute it happens, and I won't come back to read them.

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       watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       3rd time now. Can't stop it, and even pausing the video isn't enough to keep it shut off!

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       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       Ads are delivered based on your own search history, indicating your interests. No one else sees the same ads.
       
       Nevertheless, ads that startup automatically are not acceptable and HubPages is known to ban those advertises. You need to report it to staff. Be specific about the advertiser in your report so they know where it's coming from.

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          watergeekposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          It just came up again on my own profile page, no less! I immediately closed the window, then saw this post. I'll keep my eyes out for the next time and report it. Thanks for the suggestion, Glenn!

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16. 85

    rebekahELLEposted 10 years ago

    I am still seeing an error after testing and resubmitting the sitemap URL.  It gives a general HTTP error: 404 not found detected Jan. 16, 2015. http://hubimg.com/sitemaps/hub/current/ … lle.xml.gz  Is this the correct URL?

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    1. 68

       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       The URL you stated above is correct, but Google won't accept it since it's not under your subdomain. So Matthew made a duplicate under our respective subdomains to get around this problem. You have to use this URL in Google WMT…
       
       http://rebekahelle.hubpages.com/sitemap … lle.xml.gz
       
       You may need to right-click and select "copy link" to capture the entire URL above.

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          rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

          Thanks Glenn.  Thanks Matt. 
          It still doesn't work.  It gives a 404 not found.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

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             Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

             I just checked and your sitemap is there, just as I showed you.
             
             You probably know this, but just to be sure, Google already starts the beginning of the URL so you only need to append the end of it in WMT…
             
             sitemaps/hub/current/sitemap-hub-rebekahelle.xml.gz

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                rebekahELLEposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Got it!  I submitted it without the beginning, but must have missed a space or something. I just watched Interstellar, so I'm feeling kind of time warped.  Thanks again!

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                   Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                   You're welcome. Funny you mention time warp. I just updated my hub on that subject a few hours ago.

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    Craanposted 10 years ago

    Why is my sitemap still not working?  sitemaps/hub/current/sitemap-hub-craan.xml.gz

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    1. 70

       Matthew Meyerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       You can see the sitemap URL in your robots.txt file.
       You want the one with /hub/ in the URL (should be the second line in the robots.txt file)
       The general format is
       http://USERNAMEGOESHERE.hubpages.com/robots.txt
       
       So the sitemap for Hubs will look something like this.
       http://USERNAMEGOESHERE.hubpages.com/si … ERE.xml.gz
       
       So for your URLs replace USERNAMEGOESHERE with craan

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       Glenn Stokposted 10 years agoin reply to this

       You are using the correct sitemap. I'll try to help you. What happens when you click "Test Sitemap" in your WMT?

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    liladybugz26posted 10 years ago

    You are the sitemap king Mr. Matthew Meyer! Very helpful indeed.

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