Ask.com Changes or How WordPress Plugin Generated Sitemap

    I needed to update sitemap.xml after I updated our site. The site is powered by Wordpress, so even when installing Wordpress, the XML Sitemap plugin was installed and activated. I go into the plugin parameters, start the Sitemap generation, and what do I see?

    Ping Test

    Trying to ping: submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A%2F%2F <censorship deleted the site address>% 2Fsitemap.xml. The sections below should give you an idea whats going on.

    Errors, Warnings, Notices:

    Notice: WP HTTP API Web Request failed: Couldn't resolve host 'submissions.ask.com' in / home / <censorship deleted site address> / wp-content / plugins / google-sitemap-generator / sitemap-core.php on line 2364


    There really is no submissions.ask.com site, I’m going to look for what happened to it: before it was useful to notify of a new sitemap, otherwise why would a plug-in be able to do this a month ago?

    I find the answer of a certain Eric from Ask.com:

    We now utilize a crawling method of adding new content to our search index. The subdomain you refer to was just retired over the weekend, and we'll be updating that FAQ page very shortly.


    It turns out that the ask.com robot stopped using sitemaps, but the subdomain was turned off quietly. It must be that ask.com means so little to promote sites on the Russian Internet that news about this did not appear on Habr in two weeks (correct, please, if I still could not find it).

    Contrary to the promise to update the FAQ, the news about submissions.ask.com is not searched on ask.com, and the problem is mentioned in a comment on instructions on how to use sitemap.

    However, this, of course, is not a problem: in the plug-in settings, you can simply prohibit reporting information to ask.com, and it will work as before - without error messages.

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