Incorrect Namespace Error in Google Webmaster Tools -

If you are using AspDotNetStorefront, as well as possibly many other web applications, you may have noticed lately a number of errors showing up in your Google Webmaster Tools account. The error status indicates “Your Sitemap or Sitemap index file doesn’t properly declare the namespace.” or simply “Incorrect namespace” in the urlset tag.

It appears that on or about May 10, 2010, Google has stopped accepting a sitemap namespace of either “http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/1.0” or “http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84”. I’ve confirmed this across a number of websites that were using either of the namespace schemas indicated previously. They all processed fine prior to the 10th but from the 10th onward, they failed with an Incorrect namespace warning.

The correction to this problem is to use a different namespace schema. The one that is currently recommended on Google Webmaster site is the “http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9”. In AspDotNetStorefront, changing this is ALMOST as simple as changing the GoogleSiteMap.Xmlns appconfig variable to the correct schema. This will update the output of the googleentity.aspx and googletopic.aspx pages so that they output the correct namespace schema.

However, the namespace in googleindex.aspx (the primary file) has an older schema hardcoded in it. You need to change the following line:

Response.Write("<sitemapindex xmlns=\"http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap/0.84\">");

so that it reads:

Response.Write("<sitemapindex xmlns=\"" + AppLogic.AppConfig("GoogleSiteMap.Xmlns") + "\">");

These two simple changes should get you back up and running using sitemaps in Google Webmaster Tools!

Let us know if this works for you or if you have any other legitimate thoughts on this matter.

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Michael Gibbs

I'm a technologist at heart, assisting companies best utilize the Internet to market themselves and sell their products and services online. This includes organizations as large as Google and as small as one or two individuals.
At Over The Top and Exhibit A Communications, I've programmed solutions for Google as well as at least one other company that was later acquired by Google.

I've been CTO of an Internet SaaS company and spent my time pretty evenly between guiding the future technical strategy of the company, architecting software solutions for my dev teams, designing and running a data center to service our clients world-wide as well as being a technical evangalist/sales engineer to our media clients large and small.

I've also been Chief Photographer of the Daily Sun/Post newspaper back when it was a 5-day a week daily newspaper.

I also spent a great many years as a beach lifeguardfor the City of San Clemente as well as Jr. Lifeguard instructor and then as it's program coordinator.
Bragging rights
Private Pilot with Instrument rating and proud husband of soon to be 25 years (and counting).

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