Can't send sitemap for my Multistore to Google

Question

I have a rare error. I have translated my website in to multiple languages, using Magento, like www.example.com/de Now, I have added www.example.com/de in Search console and I want to send the sitemap, Google tells me to add the name of the sitemap that the page has to have structure of www.example.com/de/... but I can't do that because I have to create a folder in the root /de and if I go to www.example.com/de I see an error 403. Please suggest how I could do this, Thanks!

Answer 1

Google allows you to add multiple sitemaps for each domain. You are not required to have these maps in different sub-folders. You will need to create ones with different names for each language. for example de-sitemap.xml or sitemap-de.xml

1. In your Magento admin navigate to Catalog -> Google Sitemap

2. Create a sitemap with different names for each language. A language is usually associated with a store view. For example:

   Filename   => sitemap-de.xml
   Path       => /
   Store View => German
   

3. Add the sitemap for each language to your Google Search Console. In our example it would be http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap-de.xml

Magento can update your sitemap regularly. Go to System > Configuration > Catalog > Google Sitemap > Generation Settings. Enable Generation and set the frequency as desired.

Answer 2

This is the appropriate solution for handling multilingual websites, but there is another issue we're facing. When we created this:

Filename   => sitemap-en.xml
Path       => /media/sitemap/
Store View => English

The sitemap index generated is correct but the sitemaps within are changing URL to example.com/en/media/sitemap/sitemap-en-1-1.xml which is a 404 and it doesn't exit.

Note that if we remove the /en/ subdirectory the sitemap opens correctly. How to solve this? What are we missing here?