sadams101 Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim M Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sadams101 Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 Google news cannot read the sitemap due to this issue. This is how I discovered it...my site was dropped from Google News. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Silvester Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sadams101 Posted April 21, 2022 Author Share Posted April 21, 2022 (edited) 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Silvester Posted April 21, 2022 Share Posted April 21, 2022 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sadams101 Posted April 22, 2022 Author Share Posted April 22, 2022 It's possible that google news changed their formatting requirements. I'll look into this and report back if that is the case. Stuart Silvester 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sadams101 Posted May 3, 2022 Author Share Posted May 3, 2022 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted May 4, 2022 Share Posted May 4, 2022 Glad you have what you were looking for there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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