Google Site Map help

Steven1976a · #1 (**permalink**) 09-13-2005, 02:57 AM

To create my first google site map I used a download which has been recommneded in another discussion area

http://johannesmueller.com/gs/

It all seems easy to use, but when I submit the site map http://www.bodyjewelryshopping.com/sitemap-google.xml and I had to verify the site map by adding the verification file (http://www.bodyjewelryshopping.com/G...fc4497fae.html ) I received the following message

We've detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (OK) in the header.
this configuration presents a security risk for site verification and therefore, we can't verify your site. If your web server is configured to return a status of 200 in the header of 404 pages, and we enabled you to verify your site with this configuration, others would be able to take advantage of this and verify your site as well. This would allow others to see your site statistics. To ensure that no one can take advantage of this configuration to view statistics to sites they don't own, we only verify sites that return a status of 404 in the header of 404 pages.

Please modify your web server configuration to return a status of 404 in the header of 404 pages. Once your web server is configured correctly, try to verify the site again. If your web server is configured this way and you receive this error, click Check Status again and we'll recheck your configuration.

What is a 404 and what do I need to do to solve this?

**brian.mark** · #2 (**permalink**) 09-13-2005, 12:45 PM

404 is an error status that is returned when a file could not be located on your server. You can use this tool to check a page (something like http://www.bodyjewelryshopping.com/i...hisexists.html would work) and see what result is returned.

It looks like your server is configured to redirect anything not found to your products.htm file. This is great for a user, but Google can't tell if the file was created or not at the moment since nothing comes back as "Not Found".

Most likely, you have a .htaccess file that is reformatting what a "404 Not Found" does into a "302 Temporary Redirect". It may also be in an Apache configuration file or changed through a control panel. There are many ways this can get changed.

Many sites do this, but the way they're doing the verification it can't be validated. You'll need to turn that off, at least long enough for Google to do their test, then you can turn it back on for people going to outdated links.

Brian.

Steven1976a · #3 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 12:00 AM

Hi Brian,
Thanks for the advice. Just a few questions about "302 Temporary Redirect"

Is it okay to have a 302 temp redirect running on a website? I mean it couldnt get me into trouble with the search engines could it?

Is it completely necessary to turn it off to submit a site map to google?

The software that I am using to create the sitemap, I took from a forum in webproworld and it seems easy to use. I wanted to get any feedback about the software and to verify that it is safe to use this to create the sitemaps?

Thanks
steve

**brian.mark** · #4 (**permalink**) 09-16-2005, 12:09 AM

My opinions for your questions are below:

Is it ok to have a 302? Depends on your definition of "OK".

Suppose you have someone linking to that page I listed above. That will resolve as temporarily moved to your products page. Not a problem right? Well, it isn't unless a spider sees that link to your site. Once they see it, there is the possibility that the page that they found the link to will be entered into the index as if it were the product page. The product page may even fall out of the index due to this situation, because they may consider the products page to only temporarily be there - the "idoubtifthisexists.html" page will be back, this redirection is only temporary.

If you can change that to permanent (301 redirect), this problem will go away.

Is it completely necessary to turn it off? Well, by their new guidelines (I haven't submitted one since they started this, so I'm going by what I've heard about it in some newsletters, etc.), yes - it needs to be turned off long enough for them to verify that the page they had you create is there and your 404 works. After that, feel free to go back to your old ways.

As long as the software is creating an XML file that is within Google's specs, it'll be fine to use. There are a number of programs out there, and I haven't heard of any bad ones yet. Their standards were pretty cut and dry.

Brian.