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Sitemaps


clamor

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Hi

 

I have just discovered the inbuilt sitemap generator and have decided to try it out. I usually upload a sitemap generated by external software. I have used the rebuild function under Maintenance and the sitemap has uploaded to my shopping cart which is located in a subdirectory of my site. . When I enter the URL path on IE Explorer I am given a message asking whether I want to open or save the file. The sitemap should be clearly visible. Also, I have submitted the sitemap.xml.gz file to Google webmaster tool. Would there be any problem in having two sitemaps on webmaster tools (the cubecart version in the subdirectory and the externally generated sitemap.xml)) - as I understand the cubecart sitemap generator will not include my separate landing page? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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"When I enter the URL path on IE Explorer I am given a message asking whether I want to open or save the file. The sitemap should be clearly visible."

 

According to settings in the browser, a file that does not include a MIME-type, or the web server saying a file ending in .gz has a MIME-type of octet-stream, your browser wants you to decides what to do with it. If the file was not compressed (sitemap.xml), the web server would say the MIME-type is text/xml. Your browser, in this case, would attempt to display text-type files, but may complain that there is no definition schema to style the xml content.

 

So, the sitemap will be clearly visible if it wasn't compressed.

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as I understand the cubecart sitemap generator will not include my separate landing page?

 

I also have pages outside of CC that I want included in our Google Sitemap. I copy the xml lines for CC into the Sitemap for the home directory and use THAT sitemap.xml for Google. All our home directory sitemap links are for static pages, but it IS important that the expiration dates don't get "stale".

 

Is there any way to edit the sitemap section of seo.class.php to add in static pages, such as clamor's landing page and our static pages?? Or better yet, create a Code Snippet?

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Thanks for the responses. Should I uncompress the gz file or leave it as it is? I will try Dirty Butter's method of copying the XML lines for CC into the sitemap for the home directory. I am not sure if I can do this so will it cause problems with Google if I have two sitemaps (one in the public html folder and the other in the shopping cart folder)?

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(In an unmodified CubeCart) Creating a sitemap immediately tells Google to come and fetch it - either uncompressed or compressed - whichever way it was created. There is no way to know how long it takes Google to do this.

 

CubeCart users in these forums may know things about how Google works, and if you get a useable answer here, then good on you.

 

But perhaps you should consider to also join a discussion group on all things Google Webmaster, or Merchant, or SEO, for discussions that I would hope to have much more truthiness.

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I have the domain, as well as the store directories, in my Webmaster Tools as separate entities and send the combined one to the domain and the CC one to the store site in Webmaster Tools. Been doing it that way for years.

 

Just be sure you do NOT copy that opening part shown below from the store to the domain one:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

 

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Thanks once again to you both. I really appreciate your time and interest. Your answers have helped so I will look more closely at the sitemaps today. It is a great suggestion to join one of the forums mentioned.

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We have a complex site with sales/content areas 14 years old (back to 2000), with shtml, then a couple of wordpress areas with php, then the ecommerce system in its own directory ( /ecom/ ). And we did 301 redirects from the pre 2010 store which was at /order/ ).

 

Google has had no problem with having multiple sitemaps

1) entire site, includes store with the referential links from main pages; added to webmaster tools manually and tested ok

2) wordpress specific sitemap (e.g., blog); added to webmaster tools manually, then auto-ping on update

3) cubecart sitemap with auto-ping to Google; and added to our webmaster tools manually and tested ok

 

Google can sort out each and all pages from that kind of mess just fine. But your needs may vary.

Google Webmaster Tools has very good info when it has any kind of error for EACH sitemap.

 

We ran into an issue where using the same video on more than one page, and our sitemap tool pulled the same descriptor; so we stopped submitting a video sitemap.

 

We ran into an issue with "turning off" a page in CubeCart 5, and Google telling us the page was missing when trying to spider -- and, doh! I forget to update sitemap in store when I removed the holiday specials page ;-)

 

Hope that helped somebody.

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Hi SimChris

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply and  that was very helpful. I managed to uncompress and reload the CC sitemap to the store directory (after deleting the compressed version). I know now that it is not necessary to uncompress the file but I like to see what is going on. I was intending to copy the xml lines for CC into the sitemap in the public .html section of the main site as suggested above. Unfortunately, I have reached the limit of sitemap submissions for the month so this was not possible. The main sitemap is quite recent so this should not be a huge issue. I was worried that I might be breaking Google's rules by having two sitemaps. If Google doesn't have an issue with your set-up it should be all be okay.

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I was intending to copy the xml lines for CC into the sitemap in the public .html section of the main site as suggested above. Unfortunately, I have reached the limit of sitemap submissions for the month so this was not possible.

IF you have already submitted a sitemap for the domain to Google, you can certainly change its content without having to submit it again to them. Google will quickly use the newer version.

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