Google SiteMap noob question

[mlduclos]

Hello

Im not getting success in make a google sitemap. First, I tried to do one manually, put the main pages on it, and submit. It dont validate the page. So I start to search for validators to the google schema and found programs which crawl the site and do one sitemap automaticly. The crawler pass 2 days visiting the entire site because I dont setup all the filter for the coppermine image gallery. And google dont accept the file the program generated again.

Also, google display a error when I try to confirm the ownershipt of the site. I made the page with the code that they request but it says that my 404 page return a 200 (ok) header. Its a default apache installation and Im not sysadmin. I dont understand where is the problem.

Any help/ suggestions?

[EasyCall]

I had the same problem getting my site to validate. I had in my htaccess file "404 error document [mydomain.com...] and that is apparently what was causing the 404 error to return a 200. I removed that from htaccess and it validated fine. I put it back in and a couple weeks later, Google was again telling me they could not validate my site, so now I've removed it permanently in favor of an actual 404 error page which seems to be working ok.

[SebastianX]

ErrorDocument 404 /error.htm
or
ErrorDocument 404 /
would do the trick. Don't use relative links in the error page.

Can't post a link to my sitemaps tutorial/faq by TOS, but you could try this URL:
[groups.google.com...]

[mlduclos]

Hey, thanks people! I change the htaccess and now I can see the stats. Most of my pages have "low" page rank ;( . But my sitemap.xml it still says "incompatible" even with the file that I mane with a program specific for google. I'll try again. Do you know a good program to generate sitemap? What is the point of having a sitemap anyway? Google bot will crawl everything

[imweb]

Try xml-sitemaps.com (OK mod?). It crawls your site and provide sitemaps in xml, text, gz. I download xml version and then edit manually for priority weighting and remove blocked url. Then gzip it. Google okays.

[mlduclos]

I solve my problem with sitemap using specific scripts for pages in database (such coppermine) and a general crawler which run in my computer... called SoftPlus Gsite Crawelr. Very powerfull

Thanks =)

[edited by: tedster at 5:12 pm (utc) on Jan. 2, 2006]
[edit reason] removing off-topic stuff [/edit]