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More information on the new "unsupported file format" error for Sitemaps
As we told you a couple of days ago, we've recently enhanced the infrastructure that processes Sitemaps. We've begun processing Sitemaps against stricter guidelines because we are committed to interoperability with other tools that are using this protocol. Because of this, some of you now see an "unsupported file format" error for Sitemaps that previously had an "OK" status.
You'll see this error if the parser doesn't recognize a valid Sitemap file. Here are a few things to check if you see this error:
- Confirm that the file uses the correct header. For a Sitemap file, the header can look like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
For a Sitemap index file, the header can look like this:
<urlset xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84"> - Ensure the namespace in the header is "http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84". Note that this must end in 0.84. If it ends in .84, you'll see an error.
- Make sure each XML attribute is enclosed in either single quotes (') or double quotes (") and that those quotes are straight, not curly. If you use a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, you may find that it inserts curly quotes.
Improving things behind the scenes
We've just made some enhancements to the infrastructure that processes Sitemaps. You shouldn't notice many changes, although you may see new and more detailed error messages for your Sitemaps. If you see a different error message than you've seen before, you can click on it to view more information about it.
This change may cause some Sitemaps that used to have a status of OK to display an error message. This is because we've enhanced our reporting to provide error information that wasn't available to you before. For instance, if you see an "Invalid file format" error, make sure that you've declared the namespace in your Sitemap file correctly and that the header matches the examples we provide in our documentation.
As part of this change, you can no longer list Sitemap index files within Sitemap index files. Each Sitemap index file can list only Sitemaps. Remember that you can list up to 1,000 Sitemaps in each Sitemap index file. If you have more than 1,000 Sitemaps for a site, you can submit multiple Sitemap index files.
We've also changed the verification error message we talked about in a recent blog post. If you request verification and we receive a status other than 200 or 404 when we try to access a non-existent file on your site, you'll now see an "HTTP error".
We expect this change to be a smooth one, but please let us know in our Google Group if you experience any trouble.
If you see a "we couldn't find your verification file" error when you try to verify
When you verify site ownership, we check to see if the verification file exists on your webserver. We also make sure that your server returns a status of 404 (not found) when we request a file that doesn't exist. We do this to make sure that when we check to see if the verification file exists, we're getting the right response because it does exist and not because the server is misconfigured.
Some of you have gotten the following message when trying to verify your site: "We couldn't find your verification file. Make sure it is named correctly and is uploaded to the correct location." But when you check the file in a browser, it does exist.
We have looked into this and have found that we are displaying the incorrect error message. What is actually happening in this case is that when we request a file that doesn't exist, we are getting a response other than 404 or 200. (If we get a response of 200, we display a different error message.)
We are working to display the correct response for these cases. In the meantime, if you see this message when you try to verify and your verification does exist in the correct location, check your webserver configuration and make sure that it returns a status of 404 when a request is made for a non-existent page.
We've fixed an issue with verification files that included leading zeros
Thank you to our Google Group members for finding a bug in the verification file logic, which stripped out leading zeros when we accessed the verification file. We've fixed this. This should have only affected site owners with verification files that had the pattern google0<unique_string>.html. If your verification file has this pattern and you've had trouble verifiying, please request verification again.
More new features
We've just released a few new features.
Query stats: average top position
We already show you the top search queries that both returned your site in the results and those that searchers clicked on. Now you can see the top position for your site in the search results for both sets of queries. This position is the average over the last three weeks.
Top mobile search queries
We now also show you the top search queries from mobile devices that returned your site in the results. You'll see both mobile searches of all sites , and mobile searches of mobile-specific sites. You'll only see these results if they are available for your site. Note that at this time, we show only top search queries and not the clicks for those queries.
Downloading Sitemap details, stats, and errors
You can now download information from your Sitemaps account to a comma separated value file, which you can open in any text editor or spreadsheet program. Download this information per table, or download Sitemap details, errors, or stats, for all sites in your account in one file.
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