getting an HTTP 403 error with sitemap

I was just looking through my Google Webmaster tools and discovered that though my sitemaps have been downloaded the status shows the following error:

General HTTP error: HTTP 403 error (Forbidden)
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.

The sitemap was generated by vbseo sitemap generator successfully every night, it's in the right place... what could be wrong here?

 

Can I bump this? I'm still having this problem. My sitemap is being generated, it's in the right place, my .htaccess file is correct, but visiting the sitemap URL gives me this error message, which I think is from vbseo sitemap:

 

What are the permissions on the file? I think it needs to be set to at least 666?

 

Permissions are set to 666.

 

Check your error_logs and see if anything is there.

 

Only thing in the error log is about robots.txt

[Fri Jun 19 15:47:35 2009] [error] [client 66.249.71.57] File does not exist: /***/***/public_html/robots.txt

 

(Argh! No deleting!!!!)



Could it be your directory for your sitemap doesn't have the correct permissions? Can you go straight to your sitemap via a url?

 

When I try to access it by the real URL I get the 403 "You don't have permission to access /vbseo_sitemap/data/sitemap_index.xml.gz on this server." message

ah, this time the error log says

[Fri Jun 19 16:49:45 2009] [error] [client 69.22.203.13] client denied by server configuration: /***/***/public_html/vbseo_sitemap/data/sitemap_index.xml.gz

 

check the htaaccess file, there needs to be a redirect in there.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^((urllist|sitemap).*\.(xml|txt)(\.gz)?)$ forum/vbseo_sitemap/vbseo_getsitemap.php?sitemap=$1 [L]

If your forum is in the html root, take the forum/ off the path.

 

Here's my .htaccess:

The forum is in the root directory.

 

If you're getting a 403 error then check your permissions like Lynne mentioned. What is the folder CHMOD to?

 

The actual sitemap files have to writeable - that way the script can update them.

Did you make the first files and upload them to the sitemap folder?

 

Unzip the file. I don't think you should have a gzipped file there - sitemap_index.xml.gz . If you unzip it, you should end up with /sitemap_index.xml and that is the extension you want.

 

Turned out the /data folder was chmodded wrong. Google can read it now, thanks everyone

 

And for the record, it is indeed supposed to be gzipped (having the .gz extension).

 

Yes, it is indeed working with the .gz extension as created by vbseo sitemap generator

 

Seems kinda strange, but then I don't use a sitemap. But, now I know. Thanks.

 

It's because there is a 10MB Sitemap filesize limit.

From Google Help documentation that is no longer available:

From: [ame="http://www.scribd.com/doc/4557420/Handling-Google-Sitemaps-20pp"]Handling Google Sitemaps, 20pp@@AMEPARAM@@/docinfo/4557420?access_key=key-22em2g8xpdrocxdv9qc6@@AMEPARAM@@4557420@@AMEPARAM@@key-22em2g8xpdrocxdv9qc6[/ame]