Google Webmaster Sitemap Error: An invalid date was found in lastmod tag

Question

I submitted my website's sitemap to google webmaster but after a couple of days, I see an error message: An invalid date was found. Please fix the date or formatting before resubmitting. The error is related to the date I have mentioned in the lastmod tag. I found the format of the date on sitemaps.org, but Google is giving the error. Can someone please tell me the error with this date format?

Sitemap: www.example.in/sitemaplinks.xml
Parent tag: url
Tag: lastmod
Value: 2018-02-12T4:50:11+00:00

Answer 1

The format of the date in the lastmod tag is wrong. After 'T', the hour should be two digits, not one digit i.e. it should be 2018-02-12T04:50:11+00:00 instead of 2018-02-12T4:50:11+00:00.

Change your sitemap as follows:

<lastmod>2018-02-12T04:50:11+00:00</lastmod>