I am currently having a few problems with seo and my sitemaps.

I regularly make a site map and upload it to my server and then I ask Google to re-index the sitemap.

The sitemap takes a while to make because at the last count there was over 80,000 url's in the sitemap.

The problem is that there are pages in the sitemap that are not showing up in Google

I added a static page to my site a few weeks back and it is linked to from about three other pages on my site, it is also linked to from at least three other sites and it is also in the sitemap, but it has not been indexed by Google.

I have the Google search function on my site and it is not even in there, as it is not indexed by google?

Also about a week ago a member of my forum posted a post in my forum and an identical one in a competitors forum, virtually at the same time and my competitors post is number one in Google when you search for the post title, but it the post on my site cannot be found My competitors site does not even have the meta keywords mod installed o the search engine friendly url mod installed.

The number of pages indexed from my site in Google has also dropped recently from 11,000 to about 7,000

If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it?

Thanks in advance

chez

Google sitemap are limited to 50 000 URL per sitemap, so 80 000 is a bit ahead.

Beside, you have less link than that in your sitemap :

Number of URLs in this Google Sitemap: 40001

You seem maintain both the regular and the gun-zipped version on your server, it should not be problematic, but be careful with which one you update and submit.

Then, you do not use GYM sitemaps for your forum, and the forum url list in your sitemap is far from Good.

Mostly postxx.html and useless URL. It would be a lot better to start using the GYM sitemap mod for the forum since it only uses the topic and forum link to list all the forum content and is auto updated (so that Google will better find out about the freshest content).
Would additonally decrease the size of the other one and make it easier to update, since you would not have to crawl the forum.

A better sitemap will improve indexing, but not necessarily SERPs at first. The fact a competitor shows up before you does not mean much if your page is not cached. If it is, then, welcome to the SEO competition, fight for backlinks and good content, the rest will follow

Thanks Seo,

There are three sitemaps on the site, which are all linked to from the sitemap index. The sitemap index is what I point Google to in webmaster tools and it says that there are over 80,000 url's in the sitemap.

You are right about the normal and zipped up versions on the site, I just generate a sitemap and then upload everything ( about 10 files) to the server.

I think I need to get the sitemap problem fixed asap.

The problem is that GYM sitemaps does not create a sitemap for the rest of my site, it will only do the forum and I don't know how to sort out the sitemap, so that all of my side is indexed properly

DCZ recommended the GYM sitemap before when I was having trouble with gsitecrawler, but gsitecrawler seemed to be working correctly and so I left it alone as I don't really know what I am doing

You should definitely stop building your forump sitemap like you do, look at the forum url listed, a majority of duplicate cannot be good.

Then, you can submit more than one sitemapindex, just create a new "site" in your Google account, linked to your forum, and submit the GYM sitemapindex from there.

Then, just ask your crawler to avoid the forum dir, and you'll have smaller sitemaps to build this way and better ones (a lot) for the forum.

Thanks,

I will try that

I just looked at the mod and I think there is a mistake.

It says install time 2 minutes, when it should say 2 hours

I think I'll have to get my php webmaster friend to install this, when he has the time as it is above my head

Well, it's a module, you just need to upload files and run an install script.
Eventually, you can implement the additional rewriterule to be able to activate url rewriting for the module links (sitemaps and rss feeds).

Give a try on a local install, you'll see it's simple, at least a lot more than the mod rewrite. Of course, there are many options, but, it's worth getting familiar with them

Thanks seo,

I'm all over the place at this time of year and I'm not on my owm pc right now and so it is much easier and safer for me to send an e-mail to my friend and let him take care of it. I don't like messing with .htaccess and can't test anything from where I am right now. Hopefully he will sort it out for me in the next few days/weeks depending on how busy he is

sitemap is not that important on forums since google will not index all your page.

It is important to me and has been fixed now.

A friend of mine installed the GYM sitemap for me and it is one of the best mods of all time

Now I do not need to make my own sitemaps and leave my computer on for 18 hours whilst my site is crawled, it is all done automatically now by the GYM sitemap mod