Google indexing mainly categories

A) Have you added?

RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ ./index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view [L]

Add this line after the “RewriteBase” line.

B) Are you using for sitemap

index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view

or

sitemap.xml


[quote name=‘windowleaper’]I am confused now and not sure if this is a CS CART or Google issue. I Turned off the SEO and sitemap addon. Then submitted a new sitmap with the non seo’d URL’s to Google manually.



Result!


The number of pages indexed did not change!



Now is Google not indexing the pages due to content because their criteria has changed or is it not indexing them because of the fact the pages are classed as “too deep” or another reason such as page rank, links etc? Either way something is stopping Google indexing pages that previously it had done!



If any one out there can shed any light on this as I think there is a bunch of us here who need assistance?[/QUOTE]

[quote name=‘wartornskull’]Hi windowleaper,



When you updated to 2.1.1 did you change the url structure of your products? or where they kept the same?



If the URL structure of some of your pages has changed it could take a few weeks for all the pages to be indexed, and anything up to 6 months for you to start seeing them higher up in google, you should put some rewrites in place if you have changed the url structure.



You will also have to be careful how often you submit your sitemap, if you keep submitting it (even while trying to figure out this issue) google could penalise you meaning it would take even longer for your website to be indexed.



I personally use 2.1.1 on a live store and only have seen improvement in my rank / positioning since updating.



Another thing google do like is unique content, the more unique content you have the higher you will rank.



I’ve found the best way over my years of work in the web development and seo industry that to rank high in google, bing, yahoo etc is to just build your website with the users/customers in mind, keep the code clean and to web standards and you should never really get any problems.



You should try running your website through google webmaster tools as this will help you diagnose any problems and also will tell you if google have penalised you for anything.



Hope this helps some.[/QUOTE]



I didn’t get round to upgrading from 2.0.15 as there was so many problems in 2.1.0 that affected my other site so my URL structures are unchanged.



I have also made sure my content is unique so this should help.



Where do I look in Google Webmaster to see if i have been penalised? I can find that. Thanks for the tip on not submitting a sitemap too often I didn’t know.



Many thanks!

[quote name=‘dustundag’]A) Have you added?

RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ ./index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view [L]

Add this line after the “RewriteBase” line.

B) Are you using for sitemap

index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view

or

sitemap.xml[/QUOTE]



Sorry I am new to all this which file are you referring to in A?



I think I understand what you are asking for B) and in google wemaster i set it to Sitemap.xml.



Many thanks



Mike

If you disable seo and want to use sitemap.xml, then you must edit .htaccess file in the cs-cart root per cs-cart instruction and clear the cache before creating sitemap.xml






[quote name=‘windowleaper’]Sorry I am new to all this which file are you referring to in A?



I think I understand what you are asking for B) and in google wemaster i set it to Sitemap.xml.



Many thanks



Mike[/QUOTE]

I need help with this too. I had more than 10 000 pages indexed before upgrade ,now i have none.

I have seo enabled and in google i use sitemap.xml

is it ok or should I set it as index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view



I get an error rmessage, this one in particular:



Error de lectura XML: no se encuentra elemento

Ubicación: [url]http://electrogeneral.com/index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view[/url]

Número de línea 12385, columna 1:



Sorry, it is in Spanish, basically it says “an element can not be found”



Please, help me with this!

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]



Error de lectura XML: no se encuentra elemento

Ubicación: [url]http://electrogeneral.com/index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view[/url]

Número de línea 12385, columna 1:



Sorry, it is in Spanish, basically it says “an element can not be found”



Please, help me with this![/QUOTE]



We had this same error and it was because the XML file was not valid. Meaning that it ended with a tag and not . I didn’t know why this was happening, so I played with the settings in the Google Sitemap addon and removed the “News settings” and “Extended feature pages settings” from the sitemap. I don’t know what “Extended feature pages settings” is and we don’t use the CSC News addon so I thought disabling these wouldn’t matter for us.



After I did that, the Sitemap generated correctly with the ending tag. So in your case I would be sure the XML is valid first and then work down from there.

First, thanks for replying. yes, it seems that I have a similar problem, my sitemap is not valid.

I do not know how this heppen and here we are. the questions is, how do I solution it?

Could you please explain to me step by step what you did rto solution the issue?

I’m very concerned about this.

I edit: i read again your comment and went to add-ons, sitemap, and unmarked just what you said. Let’s see what happens.



Did you leave the rest of settings marked?

This is so frustrating! I still have the same issue, same error.

How can I check if the xml file is valid or not? I’m lost in these matters, please, help!

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]This is so frustrating! I still have the same issue, same error.

How can I check if the xml file is valid or not? I’m lost in these matters, please, help![/QUOTE]



Have you cleared the cache?

Works fine for me now. Using both paths.


[quote]





http://electrogeneral.com/

2010-09-30

daily

1











[url]http://electrogeneral.com/juego-de-3-adaptadores-para-ipod-nano-2g-es-2.html[/url]



2010-09-30

daily

0.5









[/quote]

thanks! I did clear my cache now!

well, I re-submited the sitemap and now I finally got a green mark instead of the red cross I used to get.

20.387 pages sent but 4861 pages indexed, is that ok? could that improve?

I used to have so much more pages indexed before! Anyway, it is a relief to see this finally working.

Thank you all!

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]thanks! I did clear my cache now!

well, I re-submited the sitemap and now I finally got a green mark instead of the red cross I used to get.

20.387 pages sent but 4861 pages indexed, is that ok? could that improve?

I used to have so much more pages indexed before! Anyway, it is a relief to see this finally working.

Thank you all![/QUOTE]



There are several views on amount of pages indexed, but it does seem that with latest version indexed pages are lower.



As long as you got it working!

BarryH and ChrisW, why do I still have tag and not ?

If I understood correctly, the sitemap shuld generate tag and it’s not doing that :confused:

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]BarryH and ChrisW, why do I still have tag and not ?

If I understood correctly, the sitemap shuld generate tag and it’s not doing that :confused:[/QUOTE]



Tag and are at the start and finish of file and are on each item in the file!

ahhh! ok, thanks for clearing that up. As you can see I have no idea :smiley:

I see that main url has priority 1 and others priority 0.5 , should that be changed?

Is there anything wrong you noticed in my sitemap or that could be improved? Thanks for checking and giving me a hand! :wink:

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]ahhh! ok, thanks for clearing that up. As you can see I have no idea :smiley:

I see that main url has priority 1 and others priority 0.5 , should that be changed?

Is there anything wrong you noticed in my sitemap or that could be improved? Thanks for checking and giving me a hand! ;)[/QUOTE]



I am by no means an expert, but it looks ok to me.



i checked the link posted from sitemap above and it worked so would guess everything fine now.

[quote name=‘mirnitagl’]ahhh! ok, thanks for clearing that up. As you can see I have no idea :smiley:

I see that main url has priority 1 and others priority 0.5 , should that be changed?

Is there anything wrong you noticed in my sitemap or that could be improved? Thanks for checking and giving me a hand! ;)[/QUOTE]



Wikipedia has a good page on sitemaps and what the tags mean.



There’s nothing that you can “improve” in a sitemap, it is what it is which is simply a map of your page URL’s in a XML file. If you’ve set your site up properly the sitemap should have everything in it. A simple test is to go to the home page in the admin panel and see how many Active Items you have. You should have at least that number of tags in your sitemap.



Also, you asked about items being indexed. According to Google:


[QUOTE]

Google doesn’t guarantee that we’ll crawl or index all of your URLs. However, we use the data in your Sitemap to learn about your site’s structure, which will allow us to improve our crawler schedule and do a better job crawling your site in the future. In most cases, webmasters will benefit from Sitemap submission, and in no case will you be penalized for it.

[/QUOTE]



and I have no idea how or why some pages are indexed and others are not. It’s the Google “black magic” at work again.



Glad to see you are back in business.

With Seo On, after the sitemap submitted through the google webmaster, URLs submitted: 1,066, URLs in web index: 633. This is based on two languages.

I’m sorry to say I cointinue witth the same problem, I have cleared cache and the problem continues. I do not know what else to do.



Google keeps on telling me:

41761 Analysis error

We’re not able to read your sitemap. It is possible it has an entry we can not recognize. Validate your sitemap beofre sending it again.



(it is a translation from Spanish so it’s not the exact phrase)



Any ideas?

I have the same problem: Google index the categories and sub categories only. Very few product pages indexed. Before upgraded to 2.1. Goole indexed all pages. I sumbited sitemap.xml to google again and again, no improvement.



What could be the reason? how to fix it?