PLEASE Advise - Google News Sitemap

[beyondyours]

Hi all,

Sooooo glad I found the forum.

I am having trouble getting GOOGLE to access my Google NEWS sitemap (news not a regular sitemap).

The error I get within GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS is:
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We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.
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I am using the WORD PRESS Google News Sitemap generator PLUGIN to create my google-new-sitemap.xml .

My robots.txt file is this:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

When I run the CRAWLER ACCESS test within GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS I get this result for both the Googlebot and the Googlebot-Mobile:

Allowed by line 2: Disallow:
Detected as a directory; specific files may have different restrictions

This is an older domain that I bought off GoDaddy and has not been used for a few months. It has a clean history. The last time the ROBOTS.TXT file was downloaded was back in August 11, 2010 and the STATUS was 400(Bad Request).

Shouldn't it get updated? Or does it take a while.

PLEASE help me debug this situation. What do you suggest I do first, second, third...?

Thank you in advance.

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Hello,

Is regular sitemap processed by Google without issues? It's possible that google bot has problems accessing your server.

[beyondyours]

Haven't tried yet.

Will do and let you know.

Thanks.

[beyondyours]

Still pending?

In the meantime, what do I do with the ROR, HTML, and TXT files that your sitemap creator produced?

Put them in the ROOT DIRECTORY as well?

[beyondyours]

OKAY I submited just a basic SITEMAP.XML file to Google via Webmaster Tools and it too was not accepted.

So now BOTH the GOOGLE-NEW-SITEMAP.XML and the SITEMAP.XML were rejected for the same reason:

We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.

Out of curiosity I submitted an SITEMAP.XML for another domain HOSTED with another company, IT WORKED and
was successfully downloaded.

What do you guys suggest I try next in order to get sitemaps accepted?

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

There is likely the issue with your hsot then: https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/forum/index.php/topic,1345.0.html#msg4571

[beyondyours]

I thought so too.

But wouldn't the error I got from Google be that the HOST IS UNREACHABLE / ROBOTS.TXT UNREACHABLE if Googlebot was being blocked?

[XML-Sitemaps Support]

Different error message could mean that as far as I know.