Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is a fantastic plugin. It saves so much time when writing a blog and should be a perminant part of wordpress (in our opinion). I can not sing the praises of Arne Brachhold enough for this plugin.

How it works

Google XML Sitemaps simply collects a list of pages, posts, categories and tags depending on your settings and outputs a xml sitemap.

The problem this causes

Google XML Sitemaps simply looks at the content you are creating and assumes that it is a standard blog. When using wp-Member, the pages that require a subscription to access will be hidden from free users. Google XML Sitemaps will list your protected pages, posts and categories you create in the xml sitemap that it outputs. This means that when the search engines come to view your website using the sitemap, they find that the protected pages, posts and categories do not seem to exist. This is because the search engines look at your website as a free, non registered user would see your site.

We looked at posabilities of allowing search engines partial access to your protected content, but if we did this then the search engines would index your protected content and it would then be widely available to anyone who viewed the search engines cached pages of your site. Naturally this would create a gaping security hole on your blog, so we designed wp-Member to fully protect the content you want protected from free unregistered members.

Because Google XML Sitemaps lists the links to your protected content and the serach engines can not access it, it will generate an error on the search engine. The error will be something like “404 (Not found)”, “page not found” or “link broken”. This can vary depending on the tool and search engine you are using.

The work around

Login to your blog, click on settings, then click on XML-Sitemap. Scroll down to Advanced options, here you will see Exclude the following posts or pages. In here you will need to enter the page and post numbers you would like excluded from the sitemap. You can get the page and post numbers by clicking on manage and then selecting page or post. If you hover the mouse over the name of the page or post it will show a link like this “http://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=54″. The number for this post is 54. Simply gather together the protected page and post numbers and enter them into the exclude list separated by commas.

Although this process is not necessary, it makes your search engine pages cleaner and makes it easier to quickly spot genuine errors.