We're sinking with Google.......

Creating and submitting Sitemaps - Webmasters/Site owners Help

General guidelines for URLs in Sitemaps

• A Sitemap can contain a list of URLs or a list of Sitemaps.
• If your Sitemap contains a list of other Sitemaps, you should save it as a Sitemap index file and use the XML format provided for that file type. A Sitemap index file cannot list more than 50,000 Sitemaps.
• A Sitemap file can contain no more than 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 10MB when uncompressed. If your Sitemap is larger than this, break it into several smaller Sitemaps. These limits help ensure that your web server is not overloaded by serving large files to Google.
• Specify all URLs using the same syntax. For instance, if you specify your site location as Example Web Page, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with Example Web Page. And if you specify your site location as Example Web Page, your URL list should not contain URLs that begin with Example Web Page.
• Do not include session IDs in URLs.
• Do not include direct image URLs in Sitemaps. Google does not index the image directly; instead, we index the page on which the image appears. Direct image URLs included in Sitemaps won't be indexed.
• The Sitemap URL must be encoded for readability by the webserver on which it is located. In addition, it can contain only ASCII characters. It can't contain upper ASCII characters or certain control codes or special characters such as * and {}. If your Sitemap URL contains these characters, you'll receive an error when you try to add it

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Well at this point my numbers are lower than they have ever been with Google... I have tried just doing a few sitemaps as instructed by the staff here, I went from 1.9 million to my current number of 70,000

I have sites with 1/4 of the traffic that are hanging right there with close the same number as what I have. I have 2.3 million post and I just have no idea what to do.. I am open at this poing to pay someone to take a look at all my settings to tell me what is going on..... I just can't believe that the new google caffeine would effect me but not my competition... This all started the day I went to the new version.....

Doug

Have you verified that you haven't been exploited? check your hooks (specifically global start) for any rogue code.

I would suggest going through this hole thread and secreting all writable folders, files, and securing down and renaming your admin areas.
Security issue

You may also want to grep your site files to see if there's any rogue code

Code:

 grep -r 'base64' /home/path/public_html/

as most of these attacks have shoved base64 decode code bits into templates and or files.

There will be positive results here, and most are ok. You still need to know what to look for.

all the xml_rpc files and some DB file storage engines will use base64 decode and encode normally. If you see anything that looks like it might be out of place, open the file it points to and check the code. Generally, these hacks all shove the code in at the very top of the script above the usual <?php opening tag so they are easy to spot.

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Code:

 grep -r 'base64' /home/path/public_html/

Thanks Brian, Also I use these commands to make sure all my files are chmod 644 and it doesn't mess with the folder permissions using these commands which is what I love about these commands.

Code:

find . -type f -name '*.php*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.html*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.gif*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.png*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.jpg*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.swf*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.ini*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

cd into your root directory first.

EXAPMLE:

Code:

cd /home/path/public_html/

Hope this helps someone.

Thanks,

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

Have you verified that you haven't been exploited? check your hooks (specifically global start) for any rogue code.

I would suggest going through this hole thread and secreting all writable folders, files, and securing down and renaming your admin areas.
Security issue

You may also want to grep your site files to see if there's any rogue code

Code:

 grep -r 'base64' /home/path/public_html/

as most of these attacks have shoved base64 decode code bits into templates and or files.

There will be positive results here, and most are ok. You still need to know what to look for.

all the xml_rpc files and some DB file storage engines will use base64 decode and encode normally. If you see anything that looks like it might be out of place, open the file it points to and check the code. Generally, these hacks all shove the code in at the very top of the script above the usual <?php opening tag so they are easy to spot.

Thanks guys but if you don't know what the positives are and how to interprete the results this isn't going to help me... I honestly don't think that I have been compromised... This all started from the very day I upgraded to the new version... The first day I installed VBSEO I went from a few thousand indexed to 1.9 million in about a week and stayed there for about 9 months or so, I dropped off the face of Google about the same speed when I upgraded. It was suggested that I had too many files in my sitemap so I changed it to just a few, nothing, I have changed the content of the sitemap by suggestion, nothing, now I just watch my number go down each day... I've dropped 20k in the past week......

I think what I need is someone that want to take a look, tell me how much it would cost to see what might be going on.....

Doug

So I sent a ticket into VBSEO to see about having a tech check my system to make sure that it was configured correctly and I got a response back today that this is not a service that is offered. I ws more than happy to pay but no go... So it looks like you can buy VBSEO but no one can check your system to see if its configured, sounds odd to me..

CAP

We have discussed offering a service like this in the future, however, it currently is not a product or service that we offer at this time.