Sitemap

[SamRead]

Is there a way to ensure all products listed on Square Online are in the xml sitemap? At present it seems like only a fifth of the products we have are listed in ours.  

[Breffni]

Hi @SamRead, thanks for your post! 

Is your Square Online site relatively new? 

It can take a number of weeks for new Square Online sites to be indexed and unindexed in search engine listings, and even longer for a site to show up in the results for specific keywords so this would apply also to your sitemap. 

I would suggest checking out this article on Verifying a Square Online Site with Search Engines for SEO, and making sure everything is set up correctly. 

In the Seller Community we don’t provide SEO consultation so I'm sorry I can't assist much further here. 

[SamRead]

Hi Alegra, 

Our Square Online site has been running since Spring 2020. Since then, organically, many items were indexed by search engines. However, we recently followed the article and verified the online site using the Square-generated sitemap but we've seen 70% of our items unindexed (the sitemap generated by Square Online only seems to cover 20% of our products).

We can pay for an alternative sitemap to be generated but it would need to be hosted on the Square Online website. Is there a way to upload our own version?

Thanks,
Will

[Breffni]

Hi Will,

I'm going to have to enquire with our Square Online team on this one. 

When you have a moment can you send me a link to your site & some examples of this missing items? Feel free to DM it to me on here either. @SamRead

[SamRead]

Hi Allegra,

Our site is www.samreadbooks.co.uk and so the automated sitemap is here: http://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/sitemap.xml

Items included appear to be a sample rather than the whole, e.g. looking at recent titles... https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/abc-merriman-labor-britons-through-negro-spectacles-intr-bern...

features but not

https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/toni-morrison-recitatif-intr-zadie-smith-/10422

or
https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/pre-order-clare-pollard-delphi/10404

Similarly, items listed many months ago are still note listed on the sitemap e.g.

https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/Grasmere/486

or

https://www.samreadbooks.co.uk/product/neil-honeyman-old-grasmere-and-rydal/1241

The problem we seem to have encountered is the automated sitemap the Square Online article encourages us to upload to the Google Console replaces whatever 'non-verified' approach existed before and so it imagines that pages unlisted on the sitemap can now be ignored... meaning we've reduced our coverage significantly by intending to increase it! 

Any advice you can provide on this is gratefully received!

[Breffni]

Thanks for the links @SamRead. 

I've reached out to the Square Online team to see if there's any tips they can provide us with here, I'll follow up with you when they come back to me. 

[Breffni]

@SamRead, just to let you know our Square Online team have escalated this case to our engineering team for further review. 

It may be a few days before I have an update but I'll let you know once I do. 

[SamRead]

Hi Alegra, 

Is there any progress on this? Thanks

[Breffni]

Hi @SamRead, sorry for the delay on this. I checked in earlier in the week and our engineers are working on your case but I don't have an update just yet. I'm keeping an eye on the case so will let you know as soon as I do, thanks for your patience! 

[SamRead]

Hi Alegra, Would you know any more about the sitemap issue as yet? Thanks

[Breffni]

Thanks for following up @SamRead, I'm still waiting for an update from the engineers. I've checked in with them again but given the time difference, I haven't heard back yet. 

I really appreciate your patience, I know these things can take a little longer than expected to get resolved. 

[KAIZENTHERAPY]

so 2 years on this one and still no resolution for this one? @Breffni 

[Lou8]

Hi @KAIZENTHERAPY, thank your for posting and welcome to the Community.

Are you having issues with your sitemap? If that's the case I'd be happy to file a ticket for you and escalate this to our engineering team. 

[KAIZENTHERAPY]

I'm having a bunch of page indexing issues with my sitemap when i look it up in google search console. 

I'll a ticket with the local square team to have a look

[SamRead]

Hi, we're still having issues too. It looks like 3-4,000 of our item pages don't appear on our sitemap. Was there ever an engineer update? 

[Lou8]

Hi @SamRead , 

I'll reach out to the engineers to ask for an update on this. I might need to open a new ticket, so I'll also DM you to confirm your account information.

[Lou8]

Hi @SamRead and @KAIZENTHERAPY, I just wanted to update you on this. 

Engineers confirmed that we have an item limit of 10,000 for our sitemaps. 

We are not able to adjust this limit currently. However, our engineering team is aware this is a requested feature, and is working on a solution.

While I cannot share a timeline as this time, we'll be sure to post about it on the Community once the feature is available. 

Thank you all for your patience!