Why Blogger Sitemap Submits only 20 Pages & 3000 URLS?

Blogger Dynamic sitemap.xml due to some technical cache problem, is generating only 20 sub-pages where each page contains only 150 links (i.e. 20 X 150 = 3000 urls). That means, your blogspot Sitemap Index File  will only submit a maximum of 3000 Posts to Google Webmaster Search Console due to this technical bug. Upon exploring the organization of sitemap pages inside the index file (i.e. Parent Sitemap.xml), I came to discover that the blogger server is successfully generating sitemap pages in sequential order, the reason why they are not listed inside the Sitemap Index is because the Parent page is not pinged or refreshed after 20 pages are registered.  I am sure I may be sounding a little confusing at this moment to newbies but the illustrations and solutions below will help you understand and fix this ongoing problem where most users complained that webmaster is indexing only 3000 URLS and not indexing the remaining of your blog posts.

If you just heard about Blogger Dynamic sitemaps that I strongly recommend that you first read the following post:

• Read: Blogger Dynamic Sitemap now Contains 150 links per page

Calculate the number of Sitemaps Pages Your Blog Needs

The Blogger Sitemap Index File groups your blog posts into subpages where each page contains a total of 150 Posts. A new page is created each time your post count inside an existing page exceeds 150. 

For example if your blog contains a total of 600 published posts then your sitemap index file will create a total of 4 pages where each page will contain 150 links (i.e. 600/150 = 4 Pages). The pages will be listed inside sitemap.xml in this order:

Note: Your Sitemap Index file is located at Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

<loc>http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=1</loc>

<loc>http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=2</loc>

<loc>http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=3</loc>

<loc>http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=4</loc>

Now suppose you have around 717 published blog posts. In this case if you apply old school math then you need to create ( 717/150 = 4.78 ~ 5 Pages ). Always take one page extra if you get a divisional result in decimals. We would have considered only 4 pages if the result would have been exactly 4.00.

Sitemap index will automatically create these pages as long as your posts does not exceed a maximum of 3000. It creates only 20 pages to accommodate those 3000 posts (i.e. 20x150 = 3000). The remaining pages are not listed though created by the server and we will discuss here how to generate those extra pages manually and submit them separately to Google search console.

We need to submit the dynamic sitemap in two ways which are discussed below:

1. Submit Sitemap if your Posts are less than 3000

If your published posts are less than 3000 articles in all then you just need to submit the following sitemap to Google search console and Bing webmaster tools:

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

2. Submit Sitemap if your Posts are greater than 3000

If the count of your published posts is greater than 3,000 then you need to manually submit the subpages using the calculation we did earlier.

Follow this formula:

1 Suppose you have published up to 4,127 posts. Then you need to create subpages for only (4,127 - 3,000 = 1127) Posts. We will call them the leftover posts.

2 Divide the leftover posts by 150 to find how much sitemap pages you need to submit.

1127 / 150 = 7.513 ~ 8 Pages

3 Start the page count from 21 because 20 pages are already included inside the Parent sitemap.xml. So the sitemap pages that we need to submit along with the index sitemap are:

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=21

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=22

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=23

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=24

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=25

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=26

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=27

http://www.Your-Blog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml?page=28

The above is a screenshot of the sitemaps I submitted for one of our clients who had more than 11,147 posts. I need to create a total of 55 Pages.

Good news!

If the above method seems quite a lot like elementary math to you then wait for just 6 hours and I will release a PHP tool that will automatically create sitemaps for you. I will release this tool today inshAllah.

• UPDATE: Blogger Sitemap Generator - Version 2016 Just released!

Need Help?

Let me know if you need any further clarification or help in calculating your sitemap subpages. I would love to help in this case. Do post your comments below. I hope all those who were encountering the traffic drop issue due to sitemap indexing problems may find this tutorial helpful.

Peace and blessings buddies! =)