Everyone knows that if you host a WordPress blog on your server you can take advantage of XML sitemaps. But for those who do not, and rely on Automaticc’s WordPress.com blog hosting, sitemaps have merely been a twinkle in the bloggers eye. Twinkle no more, XML sitemaps for WordPress.com are here! Now the question is how do I use them? Here is a mini how-to to track your sitemaps in Google. (Yahoo and MSN coming soon.)
- Log into Google Sitemaps (If you do not have an account create one)
- Enter in the URL for your website into your dashboard and click Add Site.
- Next we have to verify the site.
- After clicking verify, you have to choose a verification method, we are going to choose Upload an HTML file.
- Now it gets tricky, it’s going to want you to upload the following file to your blog. But how you ask?
- Copy the random string Google generated for you in the box at the top and log into your wordpress.com account. Do not close the window, we will need it in a second.
- On your Dashboard go to Write and click on Page right below that.
- Now in the page title, paste the code that Google generated for you and hit publish. (Don’t worry, we will delete this after we verify the page.)
- Go back to the Google Sitemap page, and Click Verify and Google will verify your page.
- Back in your WordPress.com Dashboard, click on Manage and then Pages.
- Delete the page we just created ending in .html
- Go back to Google Sitemaps and click on Sitemaps in the left column.
- Click Add Sitemap and select General Sitemap.
- We are getting to the final steps now. Just enter in sitemap.xml into the box on the right.
- Click on the Add General Sitemap button right below and you have successfully added your sitemap to Google’s queue. You know you did it right when you see this message.
You have added http://jaredbrodsky.com/sitemap.xml. Reports may take several hours to update. Thank you for your patience! - Now wait an hour (mine took about 5 minutes) or so and check back on your Google webmaster page, and you will see a whole slew of information about your blog that Google will now see.
Have fun with WordPress.com’s new XML sitemap feature. If you have any questions or comments leave them below. Stay tuned for a tutorial on how to add your XML sitemap to Yahoo and MSN.
Very informative…. thanks for the help!
Doesn’t Google periodically check for that verification page?
Or maybe it’s cause I moved from a self hosted WP to WP.com that it asked for the file again.
Cool… I’m gonna have to try some
of this stuff out… Thanks for the
tips !
@niles Google only requires verification once per domain setup. Whenever you move hosts/domains it will almost always prompt you to re-verify ownership.
Hmmm, great, thanks!!
Just a note, this IS NOT required in order to use sitemaps. It gives you insight on how Google sees your blog, statistics about your blog (that surpass the regular WordPress stats) and any errors that Google may detect. There are a bunch of other cool statistics that you get as well.
Very informative
Thank you for making it so easy!
[...] http://jaredbrodsky.com/2008/06/17/new-wordpress-xml-sitemaps-and-google/ [...]
thank for the informations. I make the Indonesian translation for it.
Regards,
mumtazanas
[...] http://jaredbrodsky.com/2008/06/17/new-wordpress-xml-sitemaps-and-google/ [...]
That was really helpful – thanks!
thanks for your info. Its really usefull info for newbie like me.
thx for the great help!
everything worked fine … but google webmaster tools keeps reporting an error @ sitemap.xml status. do you have any idea what helps?
@Johnsonlab What is your blog address? Are you still getting the error? Try deleting the sitemap from google and re-adding it.
This might work for most blogs but I believe not for blogs with tabs. At least I’m not able to get it verified with mine.
Thanks for the informative tutorial… :)
Hi,
thanks for the info! I was able to add the code and get verified. However, when i put my sitemap URL in google, I got this message:
URL restricted by robots.txt
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.
Do you know why this is happening?
Simply amazing. After I read the post about sitemaps in WordPress, I was wondering how to add it to the Google thing and you’ve solved my problems. THANK YOU SO MUCH! :D
[...] http://jaredbrodsky.com/2008/06/17/new-wordpress-xml-sitemaps-and-google/ [...]
Thanks, that was very helpful.
Actually I also think Google’s Webmaster Tools check regularly if the file is still there. The solution to that: you can make the empty page a subpage of e.g. your About page – this way it’s hidden (well, depending on the chosen template) but it can remain in place.
This has been tremendously helpful. Thank you so much!
Thank you very much. This is working very well now, and I’ve not had any robots.txt issues. I do however use a blog hosted at WordPress.com, and that may have something to do with it.
[...] here, at myinternetstuff.wordpress.com. Furthermore, I found another, newer and better solution here. At the moment, /sitemap.xml is [...]
So, is it a good idea to remove the previous feed sitemap or should I leave both there?
everything is fine – thx!
Hmm … even this happens.