Broken Validation for Sitemap - Issue began 1-2 months ago

[sadams101]

I suspect that an IPB update has caused an issue with the site map, as it will no longer validate:

https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.celiac.com%2Fsitemap.php

I do know that this validation issue was not present until recently, but I don't know exactly when it began.

[Jim M]

I have tagged this topic for review by one of our developers to see why W3 is throwing this error on the sitemapindex property and the namespace key used. However, looking at my own community both Google and Bing webmaster tools are stating the sitemaps as valid so there isn't immediate cause for concern that sitemaps are unreadable by search engines at the moment.

[sadams101]

Google news cannot read the sitemap due to this issue.

This is how I discovered it...my site was dropped from Google News.

[Stuart Silvester]

A sitemap index file isn't an atom or RSS feed, so it won't validate as one.

It's a perfectly valid file you've got there - https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#sitemapIndexXMLExample

I did see that you've got multiple other (non-standard) sitemaps, it might be worth looking into whether the duplication may cause issues or confusion to Google.

Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_posts.php
Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_pages.php
Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_comments.php
Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_cmscategories_pages.php
Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_forumspages.php
Sitemap: https://www.celiac.com/sitemap_archive.php

[sadams101]

It is true that I do have other sitemaps, and also true that each one of them validated just find before whatever update you did, but now they won't validate. So I'm confused by your responses here...is this your way of saying "nothing to see here, nothing is wrong," or are you looking in this issue?

PS - Your site map won't validate either...but did before right?

https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Finvisioncommunity.com%2Fsitemap.php

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by sadams101

[Stuart Silvester]

It won't validate because it is a validator for Atom or RSS feeds. A sitemap is neither.

It won't validate your custom sitemaps either https://validator.w3.org/feed/check.cgi?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.celiac.com%2Fsitemap_posts.php since it's the wrong tool for the job.

Google Search console will tell you if there are any parsing issues with your sitemaps. As noted above, the sitemap index uses the proper sitemapindex protocol defined here: https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html#sitemapIndexXMLExample

[sadams101]

It's possible that google news changed their formatting requirements. I'll look into this and report back if that is the case. 

[sadams101]

So it appears google will now accept a new sitemap as a regular sitemap submission, as long as it is formatted according to their news standards. After submitting my custom news feed as a sitemap my site was picked up again in Google News:

https://support.google.com/news/publisher-center/answer/9545414

[Marc]

Glad you have what you were looking for there