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Site Map of my website as required by Google.

Pancho
Grafter
Posts: 83
Registered: ‎16-10-2007

Site Map of my website as required by Google.

This started as a research into why my website was not showing in Google. I created a Google account some while ago but had not accessed it lately. See page: https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount . During the process I Verified my site by adding a line, supplied by Google, that is then looked for; some progress I thought - now that all my pages are 'seen' and no faults are found. (Always good to know) To complete the excercise I need to generate a Site Map to Google's requirments and I find that something is needed to be supplied by Plus on the server for this to work. I have not yet found anything that will create this Site Map so I have a way to go with my understanding. If anybody has created one of these Site Maps for Google I would appreciate some advice about doing it and what to do it with. Google seem to say they will do it for me but have not found out how to set about it; lots of the informative text but no 'Do' button.
Sorry if this has been talked about before. Searching for 'Site Map' brings up so much stuff that is nothing to do with this topic.
4 REPLIES 4
Oldjim
Resting Legend
Posts: 38,460
Thanks: 787
Fixes: 63
Registered: ‎15-06-2007

Re: Site Map of my website as required by Google.

Use this http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ and add the result in the root directory - where you have the main index.html
Then advise Google via your account
Pancho
Grafter
Posts: 83
Registered: ‎16-10-2007

Re: Site Map of my website as required by Google.

That is most useful; thank you for the link. Have now a Site Map in various formats and will use the XML version on my pages.
Pancho
Grafter
Posts: 83
Registered: ‎16-10-2007

Re: Site Map of my website as required by Google.

Poking about more in Google I find you can create a custom 404 page but it is dependant on something to do with Plus.
Google text reads: (Note: This article covers guidelines for creating the content of your custom 404 page. For information on configuring your server to display your new 404 page, check your server or web hoster documentation. You should still make sure that your webserver returns a 404 status code to users and spiders, so that search engines don't accidentally index your custom 404 page.)
Has anybody done this before please? I am a bit stuck with what to do next. What should the custom 404 page be called. etc?
Pancho
Grafter
Posts: 83
Registered: ‎16-10-2007

Re: Site Map of my website as required by Google.

OK. I have now worked it out by searching Plus for 404. Needs .htaccess file and a notfound.html file. A bit of fiddling with tables got the Google javascript to look right. The javascript is quite useful