Adding a Blogger SiteMap to Google webmaster tools

I'm a huge fan of the Google Web Master Tools. If you run a site or are hubristic enough to weigh down cyberspace with your blog then it's really a wonderful tool when it comes to figuring out how Google is "seeing" your blog.

It also impresses upon the user how search engines work and go about indexing your content. I was trying to add a Site Map to my Blogger It's In System.What? account last night and I was getting a lot of grief. I was getting the following error:

The Sitemap must be located at http://[rootUrl]/. To add a Sitemap at http://[rootUrl]/feeds/posts/, first add that site to your account and then click the Add a Site link beside it.

What this really means is that they want a Sitemap (the feed) to be at the root of the site. This can be tricky with a Blogger account if you don't know how to tickle the Url just right. Even though Blogger tells you to normally get at your site feed by going to either:

http://[YourBloggerSubDomain].blogspot.com/feeds/posts?redirect=false
OR
http://[YourCustomDomain]/feeds/posts?redirect=false

You can really this same feed off the site root which is will keep the Webmaster Tools happy. Try using either of the following for your site map:

http://[YourBloggerSubDomain].blogspot.com/rss.xml?redirect=false
OR
http://[YourCustomDomain]/rss.xml?redirect=false

It should work just fine. It's of note that you can also use /atom.xml?redirect=false.

Hope that helps a little. Now go plague the web with yet another blog post.

Best,
Tyler