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Sitemap was fixed but there seems to be hardly any improvement in search results. What could have caused this? Richer information project? Theme change? Domain renewal? Hacking? Any solution?
New strange errors detected / Google Webmaster tools:
Pages with short meta descriptions
Posts about $1XXXXXXX written by $2Array
Posts about $1XXXXXXXX written by $2Array
Please help, thank you!
Hi there,
I flagged this thread for Staff attention. Please be pateient while you wait.
Thanks for the report, we're looking into it.
I think Google are having issues too - I got those SSL errors the other day, reported them to WP, next day the Google error messages had disappeared from the Messages on Webmaster Tools.
Of the three sites I've submitted to Google, my primary site justjennifer is coming back with 2 XML warnings and 1 error. I've just added two screenshots to my Media Library.
And perhaps not connected to sitemaps specifically, but on gammagirl there are 188 pages with a footer link to the theme designer's website (triton lite-towfiqi) that are returning a 404 error. If you want screenshots I can add them. No XML errors/warnings there.
@macmanx, do you have any news, comments on the issue? All info welcome!
No news yet, we're still looking into this. The folks who know how to fix this weren't available over the weekend.
The last issue above is now fixed ("Posts about $1blah written by $2Array").
The incorrect meta tags should have only been present on tag pages (e.g. /tag/my-tag-name). Please let us know if you're still seeing it there, or if you're seeing it anywhere else.
Thanks.
@evansolomon, staff...
The issue is unfortunately not fixed. See a screen shot uploaded via Media as an example. As you can see the problem showing "only" on tag pages is not trivial. More errors were detected in GWT yesterday.
I would very much appreciate if you could provide answers to my earlier questions under this topic. Did theme change cause this mess or what?
Any solutions to get dropped rankings back? At least suggestions?
Thank you.
The erroneous text in the meta tags is fixed. You can look at one of those pages, like here, and view its source to see the current meta tags. Here's what it says now:
<meta name="description" content="Posts about Vanhaa Tamperetta written by holipompeli" />
When Google re-indexes your site, the tags will be corrected.
Did theme change cause this mess or what?
This was unrelated to theme changes. It was a bug in a new feature across WordPress.com to help improve everyone's search rankings with more descriptive meta tags. The bug has since been fixed, but that was the cause.
the problem showing "only" on tag pages is not trivial
I apologize if I suggested it was. I was trying to help everyone confirm the change by knowing where to look. We took it as seriously as you did, and fixed it as soon as we confirmed the problem.
it's still not fixed. I'm having the same problem:
career counselor NY |
eileensharaga.com/tag/career-counselor-ny/
Feb 2, 2012 – Posts about $1career counselor NY written by $2Array.
I have this trouble and have for a few days. The HTML improvement page was updated today, 21 June. and it says I have 42 Categories with Short meta descriptions. Here are the first two:
Posts about $1art written by $2Array /category/art/
Posts about $1Babies written by $2Array /category/babies/
I do not know if this is related but my hits from the search engines have dropped to nothing except for the two tests I did today, one for Google and the other DuckDuckGo.
If you check the actually content on your sites (try using the View Source option in your browser and searching for "Posts about") you can confirm that those parts are updated and now correct. It sounds like you may be using some external tools that are showing you these things. If so, they probably have old versions saved and haven't updated to the current content of your pages yet.
In case you are seeing these in your own browser, please try clearing your cache: http://en.support.wordpress.com/browser-issues/#clear-your-cache-and-cookies
Thank you, evansolomon, for your time to answer this. I should have looked at the source. It is correct there.
I guess I have been trying to figure out why the sudden drop of search engine terms to nothing. Even though my blog is not popular (having very specific content for the most part), I would still get a couple most days and even more other times. It always felt nice when people would come by and I actually had the info they were looking for.
I have the same issue with 7 sitemap errors in google wm tools. I resubmitted but nothing has changed.
I flagged this thread for Staff attention. Please be pateient while you wait.
Would you please tell us the URL of the affected blog?
My blog url: http://hakanertr.wordpress.com
I submitted a Sitemap to Webmaster Tools of Google and in his report say: The Sitemap have errors.
The message of errors is: This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
I deleted the Sitemap and submit him again, but errors are still there... Si necesitan la URL de mi blog aqui os la dejo: La Mandraka
@macmanx - I just put a screen shot in my Media Library - Starts with "Site Map" # 4 - in blog linked to my name - same type of errors as above -
This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
Parent tag: image
Tag: loc
Looks like things have been broken since at least July 14
I've had a thread here in the forum yesterday (from day before that) and i have the same issue as @wil63r I still have the 'invalid URL' when i test the sitemap, and get can't any help from Google, as that was what i was advised to do (contact Google). Does this error affect our indexing?
Hm, this sitemap is perfectly valid on our end, and the standard schema has not been altered by Google or any other entity supporting the sitemap.xml schema.
Even then, the URL of the sitemap itself is definitely valid. I'd have to say that this is really a Google issue at this point.
Thanks macmanx. I asked these errors in google webmaster forum.
I am also having the Invalid URL errors. I hope Google fixes this soon!
Have the same "invalid URL" errors (110 at last count) as noted by posters above. Lag time in indexing a problem again as well. WP staff resolved my initial issues as detailed in the first post on this thread last month. Perhaps we can get the staffer named "beau" back on the case?
The most recent "Invalid URL" errors you've reported looks like a separate issue compared to the other ones from earlier in this thread. I've forwarded some info to our developers to see what I can find out. Thank you tons to everyone who posts screenshots, that is very helpful.
Thanks for the response. Echoing a poster on a similar thread (http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/google-webmaster-shows-issues-with-sitemapxml?replies=14), I notice that the sitemap error report for "invalid URLs" has now been replaced with a "Missing XML tags" message. Hope your developers can come up with a solution -- and soon.
Any progress on this? Latest visit from the Googlebot is reporting the same errors.
We made an update to sitemap.xml files today to fix this. However, you won't see the change immediately in Google Webmaster Tools because while the code that generates the sitemap.xml file has been fixed, it won't be updated on your specific blog until you publish a new post after the code update went in. Re-saving an existing post should also work to trigger a sitemap.xml update. Once that is done, the next time Google Webmaster Tools crawls your site, you shouldn't see any "Invalid URL" errors such as the ones reported by auxclass here.
Steps
1. Publish a new post, or re-save an existing post.
2. Check Google Webmaster Tools *after* you've done step one.
3. Report back here if you see any errors dated *after* you've published a new post or re-saved an existing post.
I applied the steps, and resubmited sitemap but nothing has changed. I have 10 errors with missing XML tags.
This topic has been closed to new replies.
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