robots.txt in this repo currently declares no sitemap, and https://www.gutenberg.org/sitemap.xml returns 404. For a catalog of 77,000+ books, a declared sitemap helps search engines find new releases quickly and confirms the full catalog is indexed.
autocat3 already implements a sitemap index (Sitemap.py, routed at /ebooks/sitemaps/ and /ebooks/sitemaps/{page}), so most of the work is done. Two things are needed:
-
Add one line to robots.txt in this repo:
Sitemap: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sitemaps/
-
Server side (per Eric this may be an Apache config that got lost): https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sitemaps/ currently 301-redirects to http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks, so crawlers cannot reach the sitemap at all right now. That redirect needs to be removed or corrected before the robots.txt line will do any good.
Related: the sitemap <loc> URLs are generated with an http:// scheme (same root cause as the canonical-tag issue filed in autocat3).
Happy to submit a PR for the robots.txt part.
(Filed at Eric Hellman's request, following a site review I sent him in July 2026.)
robots.txtin this repo currently declares no sitemap, and https://www.gutenberg.org/sitemap.xml returns 404. For a catalog of 77,000+ books, a declared sitemap helps search engines find new releases quickly and confirms the full catalog is indexed.autocat3 already implements a sitemap index (
Sitemap.py, routed at/ebooks/sitemaps/and/ebooks/sitemaps/{page}), so most of the work is done. Two things are needed:Add one line to robots.txt in this repo:
Server side (per Eric this may be an Apache config that got lost):
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/sitemaps/currently 301-redirects tohttp://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks, so crawlers cannot reach the sitemap at all right now. That redirect needs to be removed or corrected before the robots.txt line will do any good.Related: the sitemap
<loc>URLs are generated with an http:// scheme (same root cause as the canonical-tag issue filed in autocat3).Happy to submit a PR for the robots.txt part.
(Filed at Eric Hellman's request, following a site review I sent him in July 2026.)