"Duplicate URL" in sitemap

Hello,

There have been many threads about this topic in the past few days.

Google Webmaster Tools has changed an algorithm of some sort recently which caused the error to just start appearing.


There should be little to no effect to your site because of this. The sitemap is still 100% readable by Google. No one has reported massive traffic loss spawning from this event.


The vbSEO team is working on a fix for it at this time. We do not have an ETA. A patch or an upgrade will be available when the team is able to narrow down the problem and produce release a fix.

In the meantime, please hang tight while we investigate the issue.

Hello,

suggested quick-fix for this issue is to modify vbseo_sitemap_functions.php file:
FIND:

PHP Code:

global $vbseo_vars, $vboptions, $vbseo_stat; 


REPLACE WITH:

PHP Code:

           global $vbseo_vars, $vboptions, $vbseo_stat, $vbseo_sm_dupcheck;
           $urlhash = md5($url);
           if($vbseo_sm_dupcheck[$urlhash]++>0)return false; 


Thanks Oleg Ignatiuk for the quick fix. finally the sitemap validation turned to green again

Originally Posted by Oleg Ignatiuk

Hello,

suggested quick-fix for this issue is to modify vbseo_sitemap_functions.php file:
FIND:

PHP Code:

global $vbseo_vars, $vboptions, $vbseo_stat; 


REPLACE WITH:

PHP Code:

           global $vbseo_vars, $vboptions, $vbseo_stat, $vbseo_sm_dupcheck;
           $urlhash = md5($url);
           if($vbseo_sm_dupcheck[$urlhash]++>0)return false; 


I must be missing something, soon as I make the edit it only creates 1 sitemap?

How many sitemaps did you used to have? Also, how many threads? and do you inlcude b-pages (tags/profiles/etc) ?

It's very possible that the removal of duplicates has dropped your total count to fit into one page now.

Thought I should mention this. Before I applied the fix, I checked Webmasters and the duplicate issue had vanished completely. I had the same issue with my WP blog but today that is fixed also.

Would this look like just an error at Googles end that they have now rectified?

Sorry for the delay, we are also seeing the same, however should we not remove them anyhow?

John Mu, a google employee, has responded to this new warning:

Hi guys
This is a new warning message we added to inform you of this issue. This does not mean that we treat your Sitemap file in any way differently, it's just for your information (and this information wasn't shown to users before). In general, it makes little sense to submit duplicate URLs in a Sitemap file, which is why this message was added.

There is one item which may lead to confusion here though - Google's Sitemaps processing generally simplifies URLs in ways that make sense on a whole. This includes removing "/index.html" from the URL if that's the last part. In general, that makes sense, since you want to show users the relevant part of the URL (and since most servers will automatically check "index.html" when the root page is requested).

However, there are some cases where "/index.html" is a relevant part of the URL and can't be removed. In these cases, we'll generally discover those URLs through our normal web-crawl. At the moment, it's possible that our Sitemaps processing will show these warnings in those cases - but since this does not signal any change in the processing of your Sitemaps files, you can safely ignore these warnings.

In short: these warnings are new, but the processing of your Sitemaps files has not changed.

Cheers
John

Would John Mu be so kind as to clarify the current problems regarding sitemaps? - Webmaster Help


The important thing to note here is that he uses the term "Warning" not error.

I didn't do the quick fix and i have the green checkmark now.