Question about sitemap.xml & parsing error

[strugglingnovice]

I have a sitemap.xml module installed on my site, but it's only indexing 4 pages instead of entire site.

From what I've read, the file should be named sitemap.xml, but mine is named sitemapindex.xml. So I went into my admin panel/configuration/sitemap XML and I edited the name and changed it to sitemap - then i went to my webmaster tools, deleted the old name, and added the new name - http://bigredworkwear/sitemap.xml

When I link to this, I'm getting an XML Parsing Error: no element found - is this just because Google hasn't picked this up yet or are there other file names I need to change from siteindex.xml to site.xml?

Does anyone have any idea why Google is only picking up those four files instead of my entire site.

Thanks once again for helping me....

[RescoCCC]

It's actually sitemapindex.xml

http://bigredworkwear.com/sitemapindex.xml

It's four "sections", not files. Each section has the URLs in it.

[RescoCCC]

PS: Don't be surprised if Google takes a while to begin adding from the sitemap to the index. Also don't be surprised if they don't add everything, or if the number they added goes up and down. All of this is normal behavior.

[strugglingnovice]

Resco, should I not have renamed that to sitemap.xml - should i have left it sitemapindex.xml?

are you telling me that it's actually finding a lot more than it looks like? i thought all it was indexing was those 4 categories, but not the sub categories, ie individual pages.

and now i've erased all the webmaster data when i did the name resubmit, but it did refer to many pages.

obviously don't know what i'm doing here...

[RescoCCC]

Yes, leave the filename as sitemapindex.xml. Within that file is your categories, your products, your ezpages, etc. If you click the link I provided to your sitemap, you can click the individual sitemaps and see what they contain.

At first glance, it looks like Google only adds the four top level categories, but if you click the sitemap link in your webmaster tools it shows further detail. You will see over toward the right "URLs submitted". That tells you how many links are in each of the four sections. Next to that you will see "URLs in web index". That will tell you how many have been added to the index.

Don't expect immediate results, though. It takes a while and there's really no rhyme or reason to what is added or how much is added.

[strugglingnovice]

thanks Resco, i put it back the way it was. just panicked here. you saved me again!!!!