Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap Errors

Not sure what I need to do here but I have waited a while to see if some of these will clear up. I have quite a few sitemap errors since installed vbseo sitemap generator, some of them are in the sitemaps themselves. Any help would be greatly appreciated.





http://www.boatinghowto.com/temp/Web...03T071103Z.csv

Hello ,

Did you redirect original vBulletin urls via .htaccess ?

Make sure you have the option in the sitemap "is vbseo installed" set to yes. Old vb urls should not be IN SITEMAPS anymore. also note the dates... they may be old hits and simply need to drop out still.

Did you redirect original vBulletin urls via .htaccess ?

No I did not do this, at least I don't remember doing this. Do you have a link to a description of what I need to do to accomplish this?

"is vbseo installed" set to yes.

This is set to yes.



thanks
tim

I have been checking this morning and now I am a little confused on this,

Did you redirect original vBulletin urls via .htaccess ?

I thought when I installed vbseo with the default settings that it pretty much took care of all of this type of stuff to include redirecting the original vbulletin urls. Isn't that what the url rewrite settings do, take the original format recode it into a better format, then point to the correct place?

So I take it that I have the original vbulletin urls just hanging out pointing to no where, correct?

If this is the case how do I redirect the original vbulletin urls?

vbseo will auto-redirect 'standard' urls only. If you used any of the vb friendly formats, extra rules need to be applied.

It looks like you had the 'basic' rewrite setting...




You can place the following RewriteRule's in your .htaccess file, right after RewriteEngine On line:

# Forum URLs
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !do=
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ([0-9]+)-[^/]+\/page([0-9]+)$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !do=
RewriteRule ^(forumdisplay\.php)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1&f=%1&page=%2 [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ([0-9]+)-[^/]+$
RewriteRule ^(forumdisplay\.php)$ vbseo.php?vbseourl=$1&f=%1 [L]

URLs for showthread pages and member profile pages are redirected automatically.

Brian thank you so much, I didn't realize I missed this as a step. So from what you are saying I had vbseo installed but it wasn't re-directing my url's because I had something other than standard url's in vbulletins settings. Yeah I think I did and just went back to check the setting but now it is shown as "standard url's". So I am not sure what setting I had for vbulletin's original url's but if I need to provide you with additional information to figure this out just let me know. I will place this in my htaccess file and see how it works.

timg

When vbseo product XML is imported, it changed that setting to standard (as it must be that way for vbseo to function).


Click one of those old urls as given from the sitemap and it should auto redirect you with that code in place to test.

Fantastic, I went to google webmaster tools and clicked on the links like you suggested and now they are working....yay! This makes me wonder what else I missed!

I have an additional "stupid" question. I am not sure where but I was told to put an .htaccess file in my servers home directory, in other words on the same level as public_html. Do I need one there?

I have the one with the url engine code etc in the root, under public_html but do I need two?

Your forum is installed in root, so your forum root IS your public_html directory.

I didn't explain that well. Yes my forum/cms is installed in the root public_html and that is where I have the .htaccess with the rewrite code.

But I also have an .htaccess file outside of public_html on the same level. In other words when I use file manager in cpanel, when I move up a level to:

/home/mysitename

I see folders like .htpaswds, spamassasin, logs, mail, public_html, public_ftp and various files.
I have an .htaccess file here that just block various IP's etc that deny various IP's etc. But I dont see a reason why I need one here when I have one in public_html.

That area is not web-accessible. it is ABOVE site.com

site.com resolves to /home/site/public_html/ (for example) and anything in '/home/site/' can't be viewed with a browser as you can't go 'higher up' than site.com

Unless those files are being CALLED FROM web accessible areas (as in the case of an htpassword like outlined here: Easy Security Tips for vBSEO customers - vBulletin SEO Forums ), they surely aren't doing anything to your site sitting there....

Thanks I learn more and more everyday, that answers my question.

thank you sir!

I have over 1600 urls listed in the "not found" on webmaster tools and they do not re-direct with the code above. These appear to be right after I installed vbseo and before I made any changes.

Sorry I don't know enough about this stuff, but I am trying to learn how all of this works, being both Old and Slow sucks. As I try and wrap my head around this I have a few questions.

1. Should I redirect the 1600 urls as well? (my assumption is NO, if I do that google won't see the error and assume the link is valid, then I would end up with google trying to go to the same place on my website via two different style urls)

2. Would I be correct in assuming that google has already found the newly formatted vbseo links that correspond to these 1600 items on my website and is working on re-indexing them?

3. But since google saw these 1600 urls as it crawled the website in the past it is just warning me that now they don't work.

4. Also would I be correct in assuming that over a period of time google will drop them out and stop warning me?

5. I assume that if I were to tweak a url rewrite setting in the future I would see a ton of errors like this until google figured out the new site layout.

It looks like you changed some settings at some point. those are preset 001 urls, but your site is using 002 currently.


going to threadid 502 as an example illustrates that.


If you're staying with the 002 preset, you can just stay there and let these errors drop out in time.