I know this sounds like a dumb question, but we plan to open on 9/27. I’ve read both on this forum and the SE FAQ’s that the SE’s could take weeks before our site is listed in their index and I’d like to get a jump start on that process.
What’s the opinion on submitting the sitemap to the SE’s perhaps a week before we open? Can the SE’s even crawl our site when the store is closed or will index.php knock them out? One issue I can think of is that if by some off chance we get indexed before we open, we could have people hitting our site with a big “Store Closed” sign but I might be willing to take that chance.
Thanks for any advice or opinions.
I wouldn’t recommend to upload the sitemap because as you said the people will be redirected to the ‘Store Closed’ site. Anyway the pages will be crawled…
Hello,
How do I set up the Sitemap in google webmaster tools? I tried to set it up using
store/googlesitemap –
store/sitemapcategories.xml
store/sitemapindex.xml
store/sitemapproducts.xml
store/sitemap.xml
But all I get is all [COLOR=“Red”]X[/COLOR]
Do I need to add anything to my website datebase?
any help will be much appreciated.
Thank you
[quote name=‘indy0077’]I wouldn’t recommend to upload the sitemap because as you said the people will be redirected to the ‘Store Closed’ site. Anyway the pages will be crawled…[/QUOTE]
Yeah I guess I might be jumping the gun here. We’ll wait until we open and let the orders pour in then. 
Thanks Indy
[quote name=‘tom437’]Hello,
How do I set up the Sitemap in google webmaster tools? I tried to set it up using
store/googlesitemap –
store/sitemapcategories.xml
store/sitemapindex.xml
store/sitemapproducts.xml
store/sitemap.xm
[/QUOTE]
I have not done this yet (obviously) but I imagine the sitemap is at [url]http://yourdomain/sitemap.xml[/url] as detailed in the addon:
Sitemap can be reached by the URL [url]yourdomain.com if SEO addon is enabled. If it is disabled, you need to add the following code to the “.htaccess” file to get this URL working:
RewriteRule ^sitemap.xml$ ./index.php?dispatch=xmlsitemap.view [L]
Add this line after the “RewriteBase” line.
The actual sitemap.xml file is in the public_html/var/cache directory.
[quote name=‘tom437’]Hello,
How do I set up the Sitemap in google webmaster tools? I tried to set it up using
store/googlesitemap –
store/sitemapcategories.xml
store/sitemapindex.xml
store/sitemapproducts.xml
store/sitemap.xml
But all I get is all [COLOR=Red]X[/COLOR]
Do I need to add anything to my website datebase?
any help will be much appreciated.
Thank you[/quote]
In your admin site:
- enable your SEO add-on
- clear your cache (delete all files and folders in /var/cache/ and /var/compiled/
- go to Administration > Add-Ons > Google Sitemap
- click on ‘Edit’
- check the link of your sitemap (e.g. [URL]http://www.yourdomain.xx/sitemap.xml[/URL]
- put the sitemap URL in your webmaster tools (without the root address) like sitemap.xml
- submit or resubmit the sitemap
I tried to enable the SEO addon, it will not active, I get this
(Request: array ( ‘version’ => ‘’, )
Response: 404 Not Found
Not Found
The requested URL /index.php was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
)Does it have something to do with my server host?
Try to clear your cache again (delete all files and folders in /var/cache/ and /var/compiled/
[quote name=‘tom437’]I did it, but it did not work. check my attachment.
:([/quote]
It seems like a .htaccess or server configuration problem. Is the ‘mod_rewrite’ enabled on your server.
I just check the PHP information and I don’t see it there. How do I know if the ‘mod_rewrite’ enabled?
And do I have to tell my server host to enabled it?
Thank you
You’ll have to contact your hosting company and ask them to add it to the Apache configuration.
Thank you, I let you know when or if I get it working.
Hey indy0077,
Thank you for you help, I did what you said and tell my website host, and now its work.
Inside my google webmaster tool, I click on the robots.txt and it said (Oops! This link appears to be broken.)
How can I fix that? or do I need to fix it?
any help will be much appreicated.
[quote name=‘tom437’]Inside my google webmaster tool, I click on the robots.txt and it said (Oops! This link appears to be broken.)
How can I fix that? or do I need to fix it?
any help will be much appreicated.[/quote]
The path to the robot.txt has to be valid. Just check the path of the robots.txt file, usually it shows like: [url]http://www.yourdomain.xx/robots.txt[/url] (if your store is in the root).
My store not in the root, its in a subdirectory, so how do I change it from [url]yourdomain.com to [url]yourdomain.com
Its been a few hours now since submit the sitemap to google wedmaster tool, and this is what it said,
Submitted URLs
6,406
[COLOR=“Red”]0 URLs in web index [/COLOR]
Does it take that long to show how many pages it index?
[quote name=‘tom437’]Its been a few hours now since submit the sitemap to google wedmaster tool, and this is what it said,
Submitted URLs
6,406
[COLOR=Red]0 URLs in web index [/COLOR]
Does it take that long to show how many pages it index?[/quote]
Sure, days, weeks…
…months, years and never if Google doesn’t like it.
[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]…months, years and never if Google doesn’t like it.:p[/quote]
That’s it!