Noticing A Competitor in my Google Sitemap?

[tshirtdeal]

I am seeing a comeptitor in my Google sitemap? What the heck does this mean?

one of my urls are for example

www.example.com/competitor.html

expect that iis how I would spell my url ...this one spells like this

www.example.com/<competitor>.html

what is this? it is an error in my google sitemap in google webmaster tools?

This site has dropped bad, I thought is was dewy and an algo change but after looking deeper feel something is up.....

TIA

[edited by: tedster at 7:04 am (utc) on April 24, 2008]
[edit reason] switch to example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tshirtdeal]

huh...thanks tedster...I am so bad...didnt know that example.com is the same as 555-555-5555 in movies :)

[tedster]

You're welcome. I'm not clear - is this url showing in a Sitemap that you generate? Or is it just being reported in your Webmaster tools?

What happens if you try to go to that url with a browser?

[kamikaze Optimizer]

What do you mean in your Google sitemap? Please explain.

<EDIT> Sorry Ted, I was asking the same question at the same time<EDIT>

[edited by: kamikaze_Optimizer at 7:15 am (utc) on April 24, 2008]

[tshirtdeal]

Ok,

I submit a Google sitemap through the Google webmaster section, it is an uploaded sitemap to google which is updated any time I change anything on my site....

I check in today and there are 3 errors...2 are just spelling mistakes I made....the last one is something I have never seen before...

TEDSTER - I do not see it in my sitemap, but in Google Webmasters it is showing there as an error - URL Not Found

when you click on the URL it is a 404 error not found.....

Just very confused as how this URL is assciated with my site, why Google webamsters have found it and why a competing site is in it....

such as my urls read www.example.com www.example.com/example1.html and this is read www.example/<competitor>.html

and that is with the arrow brackets <>

[kamikaze Optimizer]

If I saw that in my GWT account, I would be looking for a SQL injection or some other vulnerability.

Your view might be different depending on your sight..., could you have done this by mistake and linked like this?

[edited by: kamikaze_Optimizer at 7:34 am (utc) on April 24, 2008]

[tshirtdeal]

I am checking that now....

I just do not know how this would show up....

could I have placed a link on my site and it be a mistake in spelling so that Google picks the link up as not live but attributed to my www.example.com domain?

[Habtom]

Google Webmasters it is showing there as an error - URL Not Found

If you don't have a link pointing to that page, and/or that page was never create, you should probably ignore this.

[Oliver Henniges]

If a broken link on your site is not the reason: It may be the case, that on an external site there is a backlink to this not-found-URL on your site. You might check it by entering this URL in inverted commas as a search query, maybe google comes up with the source.

If this is the case, you may either ignore it or silently say "thank you" and create a page with exactly this URI. Such backlinks to inner pages (i.e. other than the main page) are worth a lot, I think. Check what the content of the page linking to you is, and create some own content related to it.

[tshirtdeal]

Yup, it was a broken link on my site, so it created the url of my site and placed the other site into that somehoe...

Got it fixed though....

Thanks Guys and Gals...

Now on to my next problems....

[g1smd]

Tools like Xenu LinkSleuth would have found the source of that error in a few minutes. Highly recommended.

[Lorel]

Tools like Xenu LinkSleuth would have found the source of that error in a few minutes. Highly recommended

I wish they would produce that program for the Mac.

[edited by: Lorel at 12:35 am (utc) on April 27, 2008]

[g1smd]

There are some online tools that do a similar job.

Try the W3C link check, perhaps?

[potentialgeek]

Some web authoring programs check links, too, e.g., Dreamweaver.

Xenu used to crash (big site).

p/g