Validating sitemap crawl on Google and Bing WMTs for an externally hosted sitemap.

[josh-riley]

I recently started to explore automated options for sitemap generation because the frequency of updates to my site and the scale at which they are needed.  So I am experimenting with pro-sitemaps.com.  Everything seems to be working well, but Google and Bing are not acknowledging that the sitemap is from my domain on WMTs.  It always says, "0" sitemaps submitted, or asks me to submit a sitemap.

To see how it works, I registered the pro-sitemaps.com domain on Bing and I was able to validate it, so the the pro-sitemaps domain appears within the same dashboard as my site.  I also updated robots.txt to identify that the my site's sitemap is on pro-sitemaps.com
Example:  sitemap: http://aXXXXX.hostedsitemaps.com/XXXXXXX/sitemap.xml.gz

For Google, there was an automated way to register, which I did.  Prositemaps confirms that both Google and Bing are verified and they are both pinged when a new sitemap is created, however, WMTs does not acknowledge that there is a sitemap for my site specifically.

Is there a way to have Google and Bing report the sitemap submission on my specific domain while hosting the sitemap on a different domain?  At the very least, I would like to confirm that Google and Bing are handling the sitemap as if it were on my domain rather than another domain.  It appears to be working well, but without the data coming directly into WMTs for my site, I don't want to jump to conclusions.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Andrea,

According to documentation on http://www.xml-sitemaps.com, it sounds like you are good to go. To be sure, though, why not send the provider an email, or post your question in their forum? They seem to be very responsive to user questions like yours. Best of luck!

Christy

[josh-riley]

Thanks Christy!

I was able to reach the provider and they were very helpful.  It looks like everything was setup properly and I am seeing a large increase in pages indexed.  I appreciate the response and validation!

[Christy-Correll]

Great news, Andrea! Thanks for the update.