Now, minor problems in a sitemap will be reported as "warnings," and will appear instead of, or
in addition to, more serious "errors." (Previously all problems were listed as errors.)
Warnings allow us to provide feedback on portions of your sitemap that may be confusing or
inaccurate, while saving the real "error" alarm for problems that make your sitemap completely
unreadable. We hope the additional information makes it even easier to share your sitemaps with
Google.
The new set of warnings includes many problems that we had previously classified as errors,
including the "incorrect namespace" and "invalid date" examples shown in the screenshot above.
We also crawl a sample of the URLs listed in your sitemap and report warnings if the Googlebot
runs into any trouble with them. These warnings might suggest a widespread problem with your
site that warrants further investigation, such as a stale sitemap or a
misconfigured robots.txt file.
Please let us know how you like this new feedback. Tell us what you think via the comments
below, or in the
discussion group.
We also appreciate suggestions for additional warnings that you would find useful.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["Webmaster Tools now provides more granular feedback on sitemaps, differentiating between minor \"warnings\" and critical \"errors\" to help webmasters better understand and address issues."],["Warnings may indicate issues like incorrect namespaces, invalid dates, or problems Googlebot encounters while crawling URLs in the sitemap, prompting further investigation if necessary."],["The improved feedback system aims to make it easier for webmasters to share sitemaps with Google and encourages user feedback for further enhancements."]]],[]]
