How do I fix the Google Webmaster Tools warning: "URL not followed?"

Question

A few days after submitting my sitemap to Google, I received this warning:

When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.

The example URL Google gave me is http://iketqua.net/?_escaped_fragment_=CIDTKT/mien-trung/xo-so-kon-tum

I checked all possible things that I could think of, but still can't figure out what the warning is about! My sitemap: http://iketqua.net/sitemap.xml

Answer 1

Your _escaped_fragment URL is not the canonical form. It is a technical workaround for hash bang AJAX syntax: http://iketqua.net/#!CIDTKT/mien-trung/xo-so-kon-tum

You should NOT include the escaped fragment URL in the sitemap, but rather the hash bang URL.

From Google's AJAX crawling help documents (emphasis theirs):

Crawlers use Sitemaps to complement their discovery crawl. Your Sitemap should include the version of your URLs that you'd prefer to have displayed in search results, so in most cases it would be http://example.com/ajax.html#!key=value. Do not include links such as http://example.com/ajax.html?_escaped_fragment_=key=value in the Sitemap. Googlebot does not follow links that contain _escaped_fragment_!

Edit: I see that your sitemap actually has the correct hash bang URLs in it, the escaped fragment is not actually listed in your sitemap. I'm leaving this answer as may be useful to others with a similar problem, even if it doesn't help you.