GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS REJECTS XMAP SITEMAP

[piyush123]

I am having this continuous problem with Google Webmaster rejecting my XML and HTML sitemaps generated from XMAP. I keep getting this message:

Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it meets our Sitemap guidelines and resubmit.

On the Joomla Xmap side, I get this error when I try to view the XML sitemap


XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com ... 1&view=xml
Line Number 1, Column 35:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <![endif]--> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I am very new to sitemap creation in Joomla. Can someone please help, been tackling this for two weeks.

Thanks

[lopoBL]

Hi,

when you are submitting link to sitemap you should not include your site URL. Link should be like this:

Code: Select all

index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

and not like this

Code: Select all

http://example.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

Best,
Boris

[Kampp]

That does not work either. The following error is given by Google in version 1.2.10 of Xmap:

Line 4 Missing XML tag. This required tag is missing. Please add it and resubmit.

This is also reported here:
http://joomla.vargas.co.cr/en/forum?vie ... 6500#p6500

[Ron S]

http://www.search-friendly-web-design.c ... ml-sef-url provide a useful guide pertaining to this problem, as following:

"From the component menu, click on Xmap, then click on the options tab of your sitemap. Here you will see the urls for your sitemaps. Lets use the xml as an example.
Click on the xml link, then copy the url and remove your domain name. The default one looks like this:
/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.
To Rewrite the Xmap URL
First you need to check the actual url of the sitemap you want to change.
This may be slightly different depending on your version of xmap, your current htaccess rules and if you are running any sef extensions.
To rewrite the example above, you would add this to your htaccess file.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sitemap.xml
RewriteRule .* /index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
Now, when you visit your site at http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml your xml sitemap will be displayed.
This is the first place a search engine will look for a sitemap xml file without you submiting it directly to them! "

Note: Remember to make a site backup before your do the rewrite.

In addition to the above, I would suggest you to add this line to your Robot.txt for the purpose of sitemap auto submission to Search Engine.
sitemap: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

[Ron S]

I am having this continuous problem with Google Webmaster rejecting my XML and HTML sitemaps generated from XMAP. I keep getting this message:

Unsupported file format
Your Sitemap does not appear to be in a supported format. Please ensure it meets our Sitemap guidelines and resubmit.

On the Joomla Xmap side, I get this error when I try to view the XML sitemap


XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://www.example.com/index.php?option=com ... 1&view=xml
Line Number 1, Column 35:

<!--[if lte IE 6]> <![endif]--> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

I am very new to sitemap creation in Joomla. Can someone please help, been tackling this for two weeks.

Thanks

http://www.search-friendly-web-design.c ... ml-sef-url provide a useful guide pertaining to this problem, as following:

"Xmap is a great automatic sitemap generator for the joomla content management system.
It produces HTML (For your users) XML (for search engines) and news (Please fill me in!)
The URL's to these sitemaps however are not so search engine friendly.
 
This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.

From the component menu, click on Xmap, then click on the options tab of your sitemap. Here you will see the urls for your sitemaps. Lets use the xml as an example.
Click on the xml link, then copy the url and remove your domain name. The default one looks like this:
/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

This can easily be fixed in your .htaccess file.
To Rewrite the Xmap URL
First you need to check the actual url of the sitemap you want to change.
This may be slightly different depending on your version of xmap, your current htaccess rules and if you are running any sef extensions.
To rewrite the example above, you would add this to your htaccess file.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/sitemap.xml
RewriteRule .* /index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml
Now, when you visit your site at http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml your xml sitemap will be displayed.
This is the first place a search engine will look for a sitemap xml file without you submiting it directly to them! "

Note: Remember to make a site backup before your do the rewrite.

In addition to the above, I would suggest you to add this line to your Robot.txt for the purpose of sitemap auto submission to Search Engine.
sitemap: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

[Kampp]

Thank you for you input. But this sadly has nothing to do with the problem.

You described how to make sure that the Google finds the sitemap, but the problem described by both me and "piyush123" is that the sitemap is not accepted by Google. Thus Google has found it, but can't read it.

[rtenny]

I am using xmaps for many sites without fail. But today I have the same problem as described above. Google reads the site map but rejects it due to unsupported format.

Any Ideas or help would be appreciated.

[foodgy]

same problem.
xmap 1.2.10
Joomla 1.5.22

google: Line 4 Missing XML tag. This required tag is missing. Please add it and resubmit.

[Kampp]

I have solved it...

You can make sure that the sitemap is validated here (it needs to be):
http://www.validome.org/google/validate

You need to validate: http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=c ... 1&view=xml


The problem it that there is a conflict in the .htaccess file when using ReWrite as suggested in another post.
I solved it by forwarding in my .htaccess file by using a Redirect instead:

Code: Select all

# Forward to sitemap
Redirect /sitemap.xml http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

The path you should enter in Google Webmaster is therefore the default path used by searchengines. This is: http://youdomain.com/sitemap.xml

[foodgy]

I have solved it...

You can make sure that the sitemap is validated here (it needs to be):
http://www.validome.org/google/validate

You need to validate: http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=c ... 1&view=xml


The problem it that there is a conflict in the .htaccess file when using ReWrite as suggested in another post.
I solved it by forwarding in my .htaccess file by using a Redirect instead:

Code: Select all

# Forward to sitemap
Redirect /sitemap.xml http://youdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

The path you should enter in Google Webmaster is therefore the default path used by searchengines. This is: http://youdomain.com/sitemap.xml

sitemap is valid, but htaccess tweak didnt work

[Kampp]

• What is your site name?
• What path are you using to test it with? It should be http://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• What did you write in the htaccess?
• Did you put the htaccss code in the bottom of the file?

It takes some time before Google accepts the new path.

[treehugger73]

• What is your site name?
• What path are you using to test it with? It should be http://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml
• What did you write in the htaccess?
• Did you put the htaccss code in the bottom of the file?

It takes some time before Google accepts the new path.

Hi there - hope you don't mind me jumping in here but I am having the same problem

Joomla 1.5.22
Xmap 1.2.10

I altered the .htaccess file and re uploaded it to the server


I also tried it omitting the www
Code at the bottom of the file
Submitted to Google, failed
Any other ideas?

[Kampp]

What does Google tell you about the path in the webmasters site?
Are you sure that your webhost allows Redirects?
What happens if you use the RewriteRule described in an earlier post?

[treehugger73]

Hi thanks for your reply. I got fed up and used another site map generator.

[Braceface2007]

And i know exactly what the problem is, i have the same problem: the real issue is that when you submit the URL to google webmasters , it automatically inserts &amp into the URL, if you check the URL after google inserted &amp, it won`t work, so basically for google this URL doesn`t lead anywhere. Now, in my case the .htaccess solution didn`t work, because of the host probably, because no solution involving .htaccess ever worked for me being on this host.
I wonder if there is any other solution to redirecting the URL so that it wouldn`t contain & , because if it does google will insert &amp again.

[chintancm]

I also had similar problem...and sometimes it was giving me error on line 2 when opening from xmap component from joomla backend.

I validated my sitemap using
http://www.webmasterwebtools.com/sitema ... /index.php

and found that joomla's system cache plugin was creating some problem and so I turned it off and now google accepts the sitemap.

Regards,
Chintan

[treehugger73]

I'm glad you fixed this but it's still not working for me - system cache has always been off.

[farlyx]

Okay guys, I also have the same problem like you, which is I put the complete URL when submitting the google sitemap.
After that I checked it's status, and get error 404, and checked out that the link was wrong, because it became like this:

Code: Select all

http://www.yourdomain.com/http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

So, I change to only add this url:

Code: Select all

index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml

Now my sitemap is up and running

I hope this is useful

[treehugger73]

My sitemap has only ever been added to Google as index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml.

[Kampp]

That would be a mistake treehugger73...
You should always aim for submitting the URL http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml as this is what all search engines use by default. Therefore your site will end up working not only at google.

This tread is therefore also about how to make sure that this path works (though htaccess). See my previous posts...

[treehugger73]

But that is the sitemap url generated by Xmap.

[Kampp]

Yes... that is why you should make a redirect or rewrite in the htaccess script, so that you are able to submit http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to Google instead of the other one.

Everything is mentioned in this thread here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p ... 2#p2381732

If you don't do this, Google will not allow a bunch of features.

[treehugger73]

OK - Thanks for your reply.
I'll look into this some more though I stopped using Xmap and am using Google's sitemap at the moment which I think I'm happy with.
Is there any advantage of using Xmap that you know of??

[Kampp]

There is not a specific advantage of using Xmap. The only real point is that your sitemap should end up being found here: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Xmap gives the advantage of having the system compiling the sitemap and also that there is a sitemap on the site for users (and some serach engines). But other components can do that.

The theory is the same no matter what. Creating the htaccess change would be a good idear no matter what if needed (like with Xmap).

[treehugger73]

OK - thanks for your input, much appreciated.

[kballou]

This may not be what is causing the problem, but it is worth looking at.

The XML Standard specifies that if an XML document contains an XML declaration (the part that starts with "<?xml"), there must be absolutely nothing before the opening '<' character. Nothing -- no comment, not even whitespace or a blank line! A very strict XML parser or validator will reject such a document because "<?xml" is invalid syntax anywhere except as the very first characters of the input.

[jnodwell]

I am having this issue with xmap today. I have had my xmap sitemap redirected to mydomain.com/sitemap.xml for months now with no incident. Today, google webmasters tools tells me that it can't load the sitemap due to an http redirect 302 error.

The problem is not with the xmap extension but rather with the host. They must be redirecting and serving up mirrored content inside their network.