Author Riaz
2014
3
Premium
Rank 11100

Hi WA-ers!

I was having problems submitting my sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools and it drove me mad looking for answers on how to solve them so I thought I'd share my solution here if anyone were to come across the same problem.

Here's a list of possible problems affecting the sitemap...

1) Google XML Sitemaps Plugin has a "Dot" at the end.

  • The sitemap URL for the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is “sitemap.xml.” Believe it or not, many people mistook the dot at the end of the URL as a full stop symbol. It's actually not a full stop.

2) Yoast uses a different sitemap URL

  • Bear in mind that Yoast’s sitemap URL is “sitemap_index.xml” which is a bit different than that of the Google XML Sitemap plugin's which is “sitemap.xml.”

3) Your theme restrictions

  • Some themes can be quite strict and a tad annoying (Like mine). Try to change themes temporarily and see if it works, or create a dummy website if you do not want to go through the trouble of re-arranging content after switching themes. One you've changed your theme and if works, you can simply switch back to the original one once it's taken care of.

4) Conflict between plugins

  • Some plugins might alter another plugin's effect like how I experienced with my Contact Form plugin. If you have a lot of plugins running, try and deactivate one of them and see if it works.

5) Google accesses your sitemaps while they are still being generated

  • New websites won’t have this problem because they are fresh and have no contents. But if your website is an old one with hundreds of links going on, the sitemap might take some time to generate. You should give it around 10-15 mins or so before you submit the sitemap again.

Let me know down below if you guys are having the same if not similar problems on this. We'll try to sort it out together.

Good luck!


-Riaz




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Petra4 Premium
I have added this as one of my tags & "like".
Unsure if this has resolved my issue (status: pending) but at least I am heading in the right direction.

I have been stuck on this one for the past 2 days . . . 2 **** days . . . can you believe it!
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Riaz Premium
Hey Pretra, is it still pending?
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Riaz Premium
great! What issue might that be though, maybe I could help !
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Rubenessence Premium
Yeah, I had to submit my .xlm to google several times before succeeding.

But now I'm facing problems submitting my RSS sitemap to other services.

My theme generated /sitemap.rss but no platform seem to be able to detect it. I called it up and there's a message at the top saying "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it"

Do you know what that means?
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merlynmac Premium
Try using your URL/feed. An example would be:

https://mavicmaniacs.com/feed
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Rubenessence Premium
:( no such luck ... tried all the combinations including /feed, /rss etc ... even though AllInOne SEO says mine is /sitemap.rss (which I also tried!)
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louiseguil22 Premium
It was the DOT??? Omg ive been stuck on this problem all day trying to learn about txt robots, technical jargon and reinstalled plugins around 50 times. Because of a dot. I hate my life lol. I thought it was a full stop too *facepalm* Thank you so much for this post!!
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Riaz Premium
I know right! I went on full throttle SEO guy and dug inside out on to solve this, it was right under our noses lol
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louiseguil22 Premium
Lol! That was pretty much what I was trying to do too! :D thanks so much again! My post was indexed yesterday after only one day of publishing and a couple others were too, so I guess it definitely helps adding the site map! :)
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Riaz Premium
Nice! Awesome work, glad I could help :D
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Fleeky Premium Plus
Well solved...
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Riaz Premium
Thanks fleeks!
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Triblu Premium
Great problem solver Riaz, Thank YOU!
Have clicked "Like" and tagged for sharing in the future. :-))
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Riaz Premium
Awesome, thanks Trish! Returned the favour!
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