**RESOLVED** ProStores Stores can no longer upload sitemaps to Google.

***UPDATE***

Found a way around this, just put in the root domain, i.e. www.perrysjewelry.com without the /servlet/StoreFront on it. That pretty much makes it a non issue.

***UPDATE***

Very recently Google made a change to their Webmaster Tools that will adversely affect a ProStores store that wants to add their site and get it
verified. They have started to automatically append a trailing ‘/’ slash to the urls entered into their ‘Add a site’ function.

Google Webmaster Tools is a great website dashboard that you can add your site to, it allows you access to reports, error tracking, site speed tracking, sitemap upload, SiteLinks, as well as the infamous “Help I’ve been banned from Google!” reinclusion request form.

There are two ways to verify your site in Webmaster Tools;

1. Add a ‘meta’ tag to the Header template above the ‘/head’ tag.
2. You can upload an html file to the root folder of your store.

Problem here is that typically you don’t have access to your root folder ‘/servlet/StoreFront’ so you are left with option #1.

This issue with Webmaster Tools directly affects ProStores sites because it changes the URL of the Store that it looks at to verify your meta tag. A ProStores site thats on standard hosting ends its URLs without a trailing slash.

Example: http://www.perrysjewelry.com/servlet/the-Women%27s-Jewelry/Categories if you add a trailing slash you kill the URL and the ProStores software generates a 404 error.

Example: http://www.perrysjewelry.com/servlet/the-Women%27s-Jewelry/Categories/. For whatever reason, probably CPU cycles, there isn’t any redirection done when you visit a ProStores URL that has a trailing slash. So instead of the site sending you to the page without the slash it dies and gives a 404.

This 404 error causes verification to fail and denying access to the best parts of Webmaster Tools.

This issue also directly interferes with a ProStores store’s ability to upload a sitemap to them because you can’t have access to Webmaster Tools at all until you are verified.

If you have already verified your site before this change went through then you should be ok.

If you are on a custom hosting solution, or running on a version of ProStores 8.0 or so you may not have this issue as you probably have a different URL scheme or have the ability to do some URL re-writing.

I have forwarded my thoughts and research to ProStores already and I hope to get Google’s attention as well. If you have a ProStores store, I would log into Webmaster Tools, click help, and fill out a help request on their user forums. Draw some attention to the issue and hopefully we can get a solution.

- Matt