Sitemap error

[tonyklu]

Hi,

When i search for my blog post in google i get sitemap results, and when i click on it i get an error, here is the screen shot

http://screencast.com/t/lXOIiTnVZR1

http://screencast.com/t/MPWkuc4Ocixy

How can i fix that, it loos like if i just add www. it work just fine.

Thanks

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Tony,

You could setup a rewrite to always force the use of WWW when a user or crawler accesses your site without the use of WWW.

Depending on whether you use IIS or Apache, it will be different.

I did a quick look at your site and it looks like all of your absolute paths are correct with using WWW; however, if you use OPENSITEEXPLORER.org for http://asggutter.com/sitemap.xml you will notice that it has one linking domain: http://iwebchk.com/reports/view/asggutter.com#.UTDhWzA4tqk

I am guessing that Google is crawling iwebchk.com and is getting the non-WWW version of your sitemap from this website. If you Google the iwebchk.com URL above, you will notice that it has a date of Jan 16, 2013, so it must of cataloged this incorrectly somewhat recently.

You could also maybe try contacting iwebchk.com and asking if they would correct the sitemap URL on their website - but the rewrite to force WWW would probably be easier.

Good luck,

Mike

[tonyklu]

Hi Mike,

How can i set up a rewrite option?  does it hurt my rankings ?

Thanks for help!

[Mike.Goracke]

It depends on whether you use Apache or IIS to manage your website.

Here is an example of what you'd use if you have IIS 7:

 <code><system.webserver><rewrite><rules><rule name="Force www" stopprocessing="true"><match url="(.*)"><conditions><add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^site\.com$"></add></conditions> 
                <action type="Redirect" url="<a" href="http://www.site.com/{R:1}">http://www.site.com/{R:1} redirectType="Permanent" /></action></match></rule></rules></rewrite></system.webserver></code> 

This shows what you'd use for Apache (at least I think... I use personally use IIS):

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4907348/force-www-via-htaccess

And once you have one of these in place, you will also want to configure your Google Webmaster Tools to specify your preferred domain (Configuration > Settings > Preferred domain > Display URLs as www.YOURSITE.com).

This is technically a 301 permanent redirect, so if you have any other links on the web that point to the non-www version, they will be redirected to the correct www version - since there is a redirect at play here, it would not pass the full amount of link juice. But like I said in my previous post, it appears that you only have 1 link pointing to the incorrect version. So, you will actually be fixing a broken link by doing this. In theory, your www version will be gaining some of the link juice that the non-www version was previously receiving.

This is also going to provide your users with a better experience as well... which is nice

Make sense?

Mike