Title: Sitemap issues
Last modified: January 4, 2017

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# Sitemap issues

 *  [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * (@marcopanichi)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/)
 * Hi,
 * Google Search Console detected some issues on the sitemap generated by XML Sitemap&
   Google News feeds plugin:
 * ![Sitemap issues](https://i0.wp.com/s23.postimg.org/nlm57uptn/image.png?ssl=1)
 * Here are the details of those issues:
 * ![Sitemap issues details](https://i0.wp.com/s27.postimg.org/r82y0b6f7/image.png?
   ssl=1)
 * I have some questions:
    1. Why Google is showing me URLs in WordPress default format (URL: /?p=367882) 
       instead of the permalink format that I’ve actually set on my website (<year>/
       <month>/<post slug>)?
    2. Assuming that the first error (Invalid publication label) depends on the second(
       Missing publication tag), why the plugin doesn’t include this publication tag
       on the sitemap?
    3. The last error (Unresolved news source) sounds like that our website is not 
       in the Google News Database; it could be very strange because we actually appear
       there (I can see our posts with a site: search on Google News Homepage)
 * Thank you very much for every suggestions,
 * Marco
 * PS: If you need the link of the website let me know; I have to ask the permission
   to the owner.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8618151)
 * Hi, about the first 2 points: I’d need to see the sitemap live. Can you share
   a link?
 * About point 3, did you subit your site as a news source? If not, please follow
   the official steps to apply at Google News via [https://partnerdash.google.com/partnerdash/d/news#p:id=pfehome](https://partnerdash.google.com/partnerdash/d/news#p:id=pfehome)
   (
   but only after resolving the other errors!)
 *  Thread Starter [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * (@marcopanichi)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8637800)
 * Hi RavanH, thank you for the kind response.
 * The site is [http://www.lanostratv.it/](http://www.lanostratv.it/) ; the news
   sitemap is located at [http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml](http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml)
   as usual.
 * About point 3, the webiste results correctly included in Google News as I can
   see from the google news dashboard:
 * ![](https://i0.wp.com/s24.postimg.org/j0zyz1pxx/included.png?ssl=1)
 *  Plugin Author [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8638222)
 * It’s all very strange because none of the errors that seem to be reported in 
   GWT can be explained. And I can see none of them on the actual news sitemap [http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml](http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml)…
   if you open the news sitemap in a browser and then view the source (Ctrl+U) you
   will see no URLs like `?p=xxx` and every news entry has the required `<publication
   >` tag.
 * It is as if GWT is looking at a completely different source. Or even a completely
   different website. Could you make sure ?
 * Maybe use the “View as Googlebot” function to see if the server does not send
   another response to Google?
 *  Thread Starter [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * (@marcopanichi)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8643542)
 * Wait a moment: if Google catch the exact url (?p=123) without considering redirects,
   then errors are plausible. View as Googlebot returns in effect an error if we
   use the exact url:
 * ![](https://i0.wp.com/s28.postimg.org/wi43bxqr1/redirect.png?ssl=1)
 * But if Google News is able to follow redirect, then the rendered page is almost
   perfect (I have some resource blocked by robots.txt, but not critic problems):
 * ![](https://i0.wp.com/s24.postimg.org/9iv7phflh/view.png?ssl=1)
 * I’ve also looked for Google guidelines about redirects:
    [https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/93983?hl=en](https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/93983?hl=en)
   This rule gave me some suspects: _“Make sure you don’t use &ID= as a parameter
   in your URLs”_ but I don’t think is related to the detected issues.
 * PS: I’ve open a similar post on Google News Support Forum:
    [https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/news/Us3MMbuqiaM;context-place=forum/news](https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/news/Us3MMbuqiaM;context-place=forum/news)
 *  Plugin Author [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8643763)
 * No, I mean really look at the news sitemap source. It has NO urls like `/?p=xxx`
   there at all. The error in your first post says there are urls like that, but
   there are not. And there ARE `<publication>` tags for every entry there, but 
   the Google Search Console error sais there are not… It’s as if Google Search 
   Console is looking at a completely different news sitemap.
 * And the error about your site not being included in Google News? That’s just 
   too weird since you show in the next post that is IS included… How can that be?
 * So what I was asking is to check what google sees when you enter [http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml](http://www.lanostratv.it/sitemap-news.xml)
   in View as Googlebot. Does it show the same source as can be seen in the browser(
   right-click, View source…)
 *  Thread Starter [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * (@marcopanichi)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8643883)
 * Hi RavanH, thank you again for your support.
 * I want to reassure you that the sitemap errors (first post) are related to the
   website I linked after (second post):
 * 
    (see at the website link in the top-right corner)
 * Regarding the View as Google test, I’ve never used it to fetch a sitemap! Thank
   you for the suggestion. Doing that I’ve revealed no problems “unfortunally”:
 * ![](https://i0.wp.com/s30.postimg.org/8vewduttt/sitemap.png?ssl=1)
 * Watching at the code however, I’ve realized that even the sitemap is cached by
   Total Cache:
 *     ```
       <!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: https://www.w3-edge.com/products/
   
       Object Caching 2544/3032 objects using apc
       Page Caching using disk: enhanced (User is logged in)
   
        Served from: www.lanostratv.it @ 2017-01-11 22:32:02 by W3 Total Cache -->
       ```
   
 * This could be generate some kind of problem in your opinion? I’m very worried
   about turning the cache plugin on/off because it is a large website with lots
   of traffic and I’ve not done any tests yet.
 *  Plugin Author [Rolf Allard van Hagen](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ravanh/)
 * (@ravanh)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8643959)
 * Might indeed be a good idea testing a not cached news sitemap.
 * The cache message at the end there should not cause a problem, however the caching
   itself might be a problem. You’ll have to make sure the news sitemap is purged
   from the cache after each new post, or exclude it entirely in the W3TC exclude
   URL settings.
 * But again, how can it be that these errors do not match the real sitemap source.
   Take a look at that new error about a wrong date being used on line 24 ! It says
   there is a date tag looking like **0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00** while in the real
   source that line 24 shows:
 *     ```
       <news:publication_date>2017-01-11T20:58:06+00:00</news:publication_date>
       ```
   
 * It is simply not true or Search Console is really seeing something else then 
   we are.
 * Could you test this? Submit in Google Search Console a new sitemap with URL [http://www.lanostratv.it/?feed=sitemap-news](http://www.lanostratv.it/?feed=sitemap-news)
   and then wait for any errors on that one. The URL should show the exact same 
   news sitemap but I realy wonder if the same errors will be produced…
 *  Thread Starter [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * (@marcopanichi)
 * [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8669514)
 * Hi Ravan,
 * I have some updates:
 * 1) I did the test you suggested, I’ve sent the sitemap manually (*): there were
   no errors, as aspected!
    2) After few days the above mentioned errors came out
   again! 3) Comments at the end of the sitemap (if you are not logged) state that
   the sitemap isn’t cached: “Page Caching using disk: enhanced (Requested URI is
   rejected)”
 * (*) I’ve sent sitemap-news.xml; now I’ve tried to sent ?feed=sitemap-news
 * It is like Googlebot is not able to catch the exact sitemap.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

The topic ‘Sitemap issues’ is closed to new replies.

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## Tags

 * [Google Search Console](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/google-search-console/)
 * [sitemap error](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/sitemap-error/)

 * 8 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Marco Panichi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/marcopanichi/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/sitemap-issues-4/#post-8669514)
 * Status: not resolved