Google Site Map

[gvardy]

Google is having trouble reaching our site map?? Which seems strange as we haven't altererd anything.

This was their error message:- Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

I have checked our data feed and all seems ok but for some reason Google doesn't like it. The only changes we have made is upgrading to the latest version of Ezimerchant 4 a week ago.

Anyone else having problems with this and know of anything that we should be doing or haven't done??

[dferguson]

Your sitemap exists, however it does not contain your correct website address.

To ensure your datafeeds function properly, you MUST make sure you supply ezimerchant with your correct website URL. This is specified in the Registration Details section of ezimerchant.

Yours is currently set to nothing!

You need to set it to http://www.hobbytools.com.au

Once you do this and update the GTS (by going to the end of the wizard and clicking Update GTS) you will need to generate your site and upload it to the web.

You can also update to the latest version as well - see our website for the update.

[gvardy]

We would have always had our website address listed here, I have been through this screen a few times when we have changed or altered things and would have noticed if it wasn't listed. If this was not listed here before we also would have had problems setting up with google, clixgalore and myshopping as well 3 months after setting up - this is the first time we have had any problems after all this time

I now try to enter our website address and when I click next it dissappears. I keep trying but the same things happens it wont accept it - Sounds like some sort of bug.

We have had no problems with google up until we checked it the other day. We have also got an email from Clix Galore saying we have a problem with our data feed. Which I thought was strange as well.

David can you shed any light on why this have happened?? How can we fix this?

[Ocean storm tackle 1]

Hi,

Not sure what you are doing with google but I do know that with clix galore they dont like the data feed description

to explain better... when you enter a product into ezimerchant 4 you have
1) brief description
2) Detailed Description
3) Data feed description

I have found clix galore does not function with (3) data feed description.
If you have text in this fields mabee try deleting it as i did and then everything was sweet and worked again.

[dferguson]

Hi Gary

Can you please update to 4.0.75 and advise if the same thing happens?

Ocean storm: Gary's current problem is unrelated to the data feed description.

[gvardy]

David, did this but still the same - sent you email.

[dferguson]

Yeah, I tried to - seems like a recently introduced bug - I will have it fixed asap.

[ZingZangs]

Hi Gvardy and everyone else with the same problem,

I only found my error yesterday and it is the exact same one as yours Gvardy.
I submitted it the google data feed over a month ago and google only found the error in my site map feed on the 26th of this month.

Bit of a buggar, though glad it was found.
I had emailed David yesterday with the error and considering its the week-end I will wait to hear back from him during business hours.

I just updated my version to 4.0.75 this morning. So am hoping that it elevates the problem before I talk with David. Though since it had taken google nearly a month to download it and spot the error.

Here's Hoping!!!

[Ocean storm tackle 1]

Ok I have also had a look into my google webmaster account and it appears i also too have the same problem I now get this message

Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

However!
I am not sure if this is solely an ezimerchant problem to be honest because now all of my websites sitemaps have the same errors appearing I have many sites but only 2 of my websites use ezimerchant. So could this be an issue with google itself? have they changed their requirements?

Whilst viewing other forums to see if i could get some answers one person did mention that it could be a problem to do with web hosting settings that may have changed... Im no expert and not sure really if this has anything to do with it or not but thaught i would mention it anyway just incase the guy that made the post was on the right track??????????

all my websites are hosted with my shop hosting. So i guess my question is David is this a possibility on what the guy has suggested or is it absolutely off the track? are the other members in this thread using the hosting aswell?

now as far as i am aware my sitemaps are at the right location
for example of an ezimerchant site http://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/sitemap.xml.gz
and one of my other non ezimerchants site that is having errors http://www.fishingaquapet.com.au/sitemap.xml
if you wanted to review the sitemaps david to see if you can see any problem with them??

The only other thing im curious about is when i updated to the current version of ezimerchant i cannot turn off nor turn on datafeeds - the button is inactive to do this.

[dferguson]

Ocean

I have checked your sitemap file on http://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/sitemap.xml.gz - its fine.

When you last uploaded the http://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/ site you were not running a version of ezimerchant that has the bug I mentioned in my posts above.

If you have sitemap errors then they will be caused by somthing else. If you call me I will log in to your google account and take a look if you like.

For the others that are affected by the bug I mentioned above, we are working on the problem and will release a new version of ezimerchant shortly.

[dferguson]

We have released a new version of ezimerchant which will fix the website URL from becomming blank. Please download it from the updates page on the forum (regular place) and then once its installed go into the REGISTRATION DETAILS section and check your website URL.. it will be blank - change it to http://www.yourdomain.com etc and continue through till the end of the wizard and update the GTS.

Then generate the site and upload.. the datafeed problem should dissapear!

[gvardy]

David,

Tried all that and resubmitted sitemap addresss to Google to crawl - just got the same message back from Google again.

"Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit."


This is our sitemap address:- http://www.hobbytools.com.au/sitemap.xml.gz

[dferguson]

Can you call me and have your Google log in details handy.. I wouldnt mind taking a look to see if I can spot the problem

[Ocean storm tackle 1]

Guys
I think it was just a tempory problem with google. its self.

I resubmitted my sitemaps again after a few times trying and they work now just fine.

As previously discussed i have both ezimerchant sites and non ezimerchant websites and all my site maps had the error message. after resubmitting them a few times they finally seem to be all in order with no error messages now.

Guys try resubmitting the sitemaps again now and see what happens.

[dferguson]

Yeah, I removed and reapplied the sitemap in gvardy's google account yesterday (after he downloaded and installed the new version of ezimerchant, checked his Website Address in the rego wizard and then generated and uploaded his site), and today they seem happy with it :-)

[gvardy]

Double checked Google about 2 hours ago and all was OK, just checked before and same problem again. Deleted sitemap and then added it once again but Google doesn't like it for some reason. I will keep resubmitting and see what happens.

Strange one.....

[Ocean storm tackle 1]

Your right there garry

After 24 hours even though the site maps were accepted it appears google have revisited the maps and all of them have error messages again. (both ezimerchant and non ezimerchant website site maps)

My hands are scratching my head on this one as i really cant see what the problem is. my sitemaps appear to be in correct format and the urls provided match googles criteria.

I am now also experiencing some problems with clixgalore data feeds. David I am sending you an email on this and my findings.

[dferguson]

Clix galore feed is caused by ezimerchant using uppercase letters in the filenames... Again, unrelated to the google issue.

A new version of ezimerchant will be made available to correct the uppercase letter issue.

I think Google is just having issues - the datafeeds ezimerchant is now generating are compliant, and as your having problems with sitemaps generated by other apps the problem really does point to google.

[dferguson]

4.0.76 just released. Contains the fix for the uppercase image filename problem mentioned in my post above.

[gvardy]

Just checked Google and it looks good with the data feeds now.

I did notice this error message with 72 pages that Google says it wont crawl.

"Before we crawled the pages of your site, we tried to check your robots.txt file to ensure we didn't crawl any pages that you had roboted out. However, your robots.txt file was unreachable. To make sure we didn't crawl any pages listed in that file, we postponed our crawl. When this happens, we return to your site later and crawl it once we can reach your robots.txt file. Note that this is different from a 404 response when looking for a robots.txt file. If we receive a 404, we assume that a robots.txt file does not exist and we continue the crawl."

I removed the robots text that I had to allow robots to crawl our site. So I think I will put it back again now as Google is not crawling most of our categories.

[dferguson]

DONT put a robots.txt file on the server - if you make a mistake in it, you will cause problems.

Robots.txt is an EXCLUSION mechanism. You only require it IF you want to EXCLUDE pages from search engines.