Sitemap Dissappearance??
-
Greetings Mozzers,
Doing my standard run through Webmaster tools and I discover up to 30% of my sitemaps no longer exist.
Has anyone else experienced the recent loss of sitemaps/can suggest reasons why this may have happened?
Re-submitting all sitemaps now but just concerned this might become an on-going issue...
-
Hi Robert,
One possibility: A few months ago Google Webmaster Tools changed it's user interface to visually separate sitemaps submitted by you, and sitemaps submitted by others.
The default view shows only sitemaps submitted by the Google account you are currently logged into. If sitemaps were submitted by others, or under another Google account you have access to, the screen may appear blank with the following message:
"You have not submitted any sitemaps for this site."
But sitemaps may still exist if you hit the "All" tab. (See screenshot attached) Hitting this tab will reveal all sitemaps Google has on file.
This confuses a lot of webmasters, including myself, because it makes it look like the sitemap has disappeared, even though Google has a record of it and is actively crawling it.
-
Have not experience that lately, although I would assume it's possible just a WMT glitch.
Have you tried asking on the google forums?
All the best.
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
-
Any excellent recommendations for a sitemap.xml plugin?
Hi, I'm trying to find a sitemap generator/plugin that I can point my client to. My client is using Magento, and is one of the largest sports store i Norway (around 20 000 products). I've heard there's one that can set the <priority>according to page views, sold units, and other relevant parameters, and that also takes care of the other elements in the sitemap.xml.</priority> Any good recommendations out there? 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
What is optimal sitemap for large website
My website is having more than 3500 posts. Please let me know what sitemap plugin I need to use for the website and what is the best practice for it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Best sitemap generator that can automatically create and submit
I like screamingfrog but they don't automatically generate and submit to google. We use xml-sitemaps.org but they don't have all the functions and they crawl slow too. Can you recommend some good sitemap generator that is fast, with features and can automatically create and submit? Is inspyder good?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rbai0 -
Proper sitemap update frequency
I have 12 sitemaps submitted to Google. After about a week, Google is about 50% of the way through crawling each one. In the past week I've created many more pages. Should I wait until Google is 100% complete with my original sitemaps or can I just go ahead and refresh them? When I refresh the original files will have different URLs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Video Sitemap Creation Question
I have created a sitemap file as per Google Web Master Tools instructions. I have it saved as a .txt file. Am I right in thinking that this needs to be uploaded as a .xml file? If so, how do I convert this to a XML? I have tried but it seems to corrupt - there must be a simple way to do this?!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Mobile Sitemaps
We are planning on creating a mobile site using a different URL. Our current sitemap creator won't dynamically detect mobile pages using the rel="alternate" tag but can can create a Project for that domain in Sitemap Creator and use the "mobile" option when you export it. The Sitemap Creator will then insert the mobile:mobilecontent tag for all the URLs in that sitemap. </mobile:mobile> Is this okay or will it cause problems?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
XML Sitemaps for Message Boards / Forums - Best Practices?
I'm working with a message board that has been around for 10+ years and never taken SEO best practices into consideration. They recently started seeing mobile URLs show up in regular results, which they don't want. I'm recommending they implement multiple sitemaps to properly indicate to Google how to crawl the site and what to index. I've never dealt with a site this large so I'm not sure best practices. They have a HUGE community and new URLs are created every second. Doing a site: search returns "About 12,100,000" URLs. What are some best practices / the best way to approach sitemaps for a site of this size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Where to Include Mobile Version of Site in Sitemap
Hey All, I just did a mobile version of my site and was seeking some guidance on where to put it in the sitemap. Do i need an entirely new sitemap, or do i just add to my existing .xml Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanGreve0