Google (XML) Sitemap Generator Plugin Help (< v3.0)

Maintenance of this plugin has been taken over by Auctollo. You can find all up-to-date information on their website. If you need support, please use the forums or contact the new maintainer. Thanks!

In June 2005, Google announced a new service called Google Sitemaps. This program allows webmaster to submit an index of URLs which they want to have included in Googles web search.

You are looking at the FAQ for the old version (3.x) of the plugin. Please have a look at the new help page for the most recent information.

General Questions

What is or are Google Sitemaps?

Basically, a Google Sitemap is a file which contains URLs and some additional information for all public pages or documents of your website. Google can read this file and add the defined pages to their index.

Will Google Sitemaps affect my ranking?

There are no evidences that a Google Sitemap will directly affect your ranking. However, it can help Google to index and crawl your page better which may result in a more complete index of your page.

Technical questions

What is the maximum size of a Google Sitemap?

According to the Google Sitemap FAQ, your sitemap can contain up to 50,000 URLs or reach a file size of 10MB (uncompressed!).

Can I use RSS as my Google Sitemap?

Yes, Google Sitemaps supports RSS 2.0 and Atom 0.3 feeds. However, a Google Sitemap should contain as much pages of your site as possible but a RSS feed contains only the latest ones normally.

Can you give me an example of a Google Sitemap?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset>
    <url>
        <loc>/</loc>
        <lastmod>2006-05-22T12:31:11+00:00</lastmod>
        <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
        <priority>1</priority>
    </url>
    <url>
        <loc>/imprint/</loc>
        <lastmod>2006-05-22T13:31:11+00:00</lastmod>
    </url>
</urlset>

Help with error messages

What means the error message "This url is not allowed for a sitemap at this location"?

This error means that your sitemap contains URLs which are not allowed in your sitemap. Your sitemap can only include URLs which point to files on same domain and the same or deeper directories.

What means the error message "Invalid date"?

This error means that your sitemap contains an entry which has an invalid last modified date. Google Sitemaps requires the ISO-8601 encoding.

Sitemap Generator for WordPress Plugin FAQ

WordPress needs too long to create my sitemap or I get a timeout error

Try to increase the memory and time limits which are located under Advanced options at the sitemap configuration page.

Do I always have to click on "Rebuild Sitemap" if I modified a post?

No need to do that. If you edit/publish/delete a post, your sitemap gets automatically regenerated!

The sitemap files could not be written!

Make sure that the files "sitemap.xml" and / or "sitemap.xml.gz" are writable. You can make your whole blog root folder writable and the plugin will create the files for you.

About this FAQ

I didn't find an answer to my problem, are there any additional resources?

You can look at the Official Google Sitemaps FAQ or leave a comment on this post.

What can I do if I have suggestions or corrections for this FAQ?

Suggestions and corrections are always welcome, please write me a mail if you have some and I will update this page.