Need sitemap help

[foxtrot3]

I have a small business site - 4 pages

Installed verification meta tag per Google instructions - got the green checkmark so all is OK there. In fact got green checkmark for two (?) sites - same site, but one with WWW and one without.

I generated an XML sitemap and uploaded it. The 4 url's in the sitemap do NOT have the WWW in them.

So here's where I am now...

[mysite.com...] says "add a sitemap"
[mysite.com...] shows 1 sitemap with 4 errors

All 4 errors say "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location"

So I followed the link to the "Webmaster help center/URL not allowed" page but at this point I'm baffled. All the pages plus a couple of images plus the sitemap are in the same directory.

I hope that's enough info. Can anyone tell me how to proceed so I can get this straightened out?

Thanks in advance...

[milanmk]

First check your site in Google and see whether your pages are with WWW or not and accordingly remove the other one from your sitemap.

Milan

[londrum]

i had this problem and it confused the hell out of me for ages. the reporter kept on saying that three pages (which differed every time) were "not allowed for a Sitemap at this location", even though they were in exactly the same directory as all the other pages.

it turned out that Sitemaps had actually rejected every single page, but for some reason can only tell you about three at a time (which change each time!).

it is very simple to fix. like milanmk says, it sounds like you have your pages listed as:
website.com
on the sitemap, but submitted your site as:
[website.com...]

just resubmit it as
website.com

or include the full URLs on the sitemap to match what you submitted.
they have to be the same.

[foxtrot3]

Thank you both for your feedback...

I'm going to add WWW to the URL's in the sitemap and we'll see what happens.

[hu12]

thought I'd add to what milanmk and londrum posted, by example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
- <urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84 [google.com...]
- <url>
<loc>http://www.mydomain.com/</loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
- <url>
<loc>http://www.mydomain.com/secondpage.html</loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
- <url>
<loc>http://www.mydomain.com/thirdpage.html</loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
- <url>
<loc>http://www.mydomain.com/fourthpage.html</loc>
<priority>1.0</priority>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
</url>
- <url>
</urlset>

left out last mod
but it would look like this
<lastmod>2006-05-06T08:55:04+00:00</lastmod>

good luck

[foxtrot3]

Yikes! I added WWW to all the URL's (4) in the sitemap (it's just like the one shown above) and resubmitted it.

So now [mysite.com...] shows as being OK, but
[mysite.com...] shows the 4 errors which were on the WWW site before.

Should I submit two different sitemaps? One with WWW URL's and one without?

[hu12]

you could Mod_Rewrite to redirect the mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com

for .htaccess

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} .
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}!^www\.mydomain\.com.tld
RewriteRule (.*) [mydomain.com.tld...] [R=Permanent,L]

for httpd.conf, change the rule as follows:

RewriteRule ^/(.*) [mydomain.com.tld...] [R=Permanent,L]

[httpd.apache.org...]

some reading before you do any edits

[foxtrot3]

hu12 - Thanks but that's beyond my skill level.

Surely I can't be the only one who's faced this problem...

[milanmk]

So now [mysite.com...] shows as being OK

Should I submit two different sitemaps? One with WWW URL's and one without?

You need only one sitemap per domain if you are not using sub domains. So just keep the sitemap with WWW and remove the other one.

Milan

[hu12]

You can make all the links on your site "absolute" (The full path to the page) <http://www.mydomain.com/anypage.html> to help avoid crawling errors.

hopfully this helps some. You should look into doing a 301 for mydomain.com to www.mydomain.com when your more comfortable.

[foxtrot3]

Thanks guys - your input is much appreciated.