Changing sitemaps in console
-
Hi there,
Does anyone have any experience submitting a completely new sitemap structure - including URLs - to google console?
We've changed our sitemap plug in, so rather than /sitemap-index.xml, our main sitemap home is /sitemap.xml (as an example).
Is it better to 410 the old ones or 301 redirect them to the new sitemaps? If 301, what do we do about sitemaps that don't completely correlate - what was divided into item1.xml, item2.xml is now by date so items-from-2015.xml, items-from-2016.xml and so on.
On a related note, am I right in thinking that there's no longer a "delete/ remove sitemap" option on console? In which case, what happens to the old ones which will now 404?
Thanks anyone for any insight you may have
-
Thanks Gaston.
Have discovered the check-box and delete option on console so thankfully i have managed to delete the old ones.
Amended the new ones as you recommended. Thanks for your advice, we'll keep an eye on the results to see what happens now!
-
Hello Fubra,
First of all, there is no way to "delete" a sitemap in search console. Making the old one as 404 and adding the new sitemap is just enough. Dont worry about it.
Secondly, just add the new sitemap to search console and analyze how search console responds. The structure you are refering to is more or less a cascade of sitemaps. If you have an "index sitemap", this would be the one in the root: domain.com/sitemap.xml (or what ever name it has) just give that to search console.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Need to update Google Search Console profile for http to https change. Will a "change of address" option suffice or do we need to create a new GSC profile?
In the past I have seen most clients create new Google Search Profile when they update to a https URL. However a colleague of mine asked if just updating the change of address option will suffice https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106. Would it be best to just update the change of address for the Google Search Console profile to keep the data seamless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Are HTML Sitemaps Still Effective With "Noindex, Follow"?
A site we're working on has hundreds of thousands of inventory pages that are generally "orphaned" pages. To reach them, you need to do a lot of faceting on the search results page. They appear in our XML sitemaps as well, but I'd still consider these orphan pages. To assist with crawling and indexation, we'd like to create HTML sitemaps to link to these pages. Due to the nature (and categorization) of these products, this would mean we'll be creating thousands of individual HTML sitemap pages, which we're hesitant to put into the index. Would the sitemaps still be effective if we add a noindex, follow meta tag? Does this indicate lower quality content in some way, or will it make no difference in how search engines will handle the links therein?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mothner0 -
Invest in a Image Sitemap - Yes or No?
Hey Mozers, 2 part question I'm reaching out to see if you all think Image Sitemaps are totally worth it for a big company. I can totally understand its value for a smaller mom & pop company. With a larger company they would have way more products so is it worth it having an image site map? I cant find examples of image sitemaps online. Would you be able to provide a website that is doing it? I can only find video sitemaps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva0 -
Proper sitemap update frequency
I have 12 sitemaps submitted to Google. After about a week, Google is about 50% of the way through crawling each one. In the past week I've created many more pages. Should I wait until Google is 100% complete with my original sitemaps or can I just go ahead and refresh them? When I refresh the original files will have different URLs.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Subdomain Blog Sitemap link - Add it to regular domain?
Example of setup:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE3
www.fancydomain.com
blog.fancydomain.com Because of certain limitations, I'm told we can't put our blogs at the subdirectory level, so we are hosting our blogs at the subdomain level (blog.fancydomain.com). I've been asked to incorporate the blog's sitemap link on the regular domain, or even in the regular domain's sitemap. 1. Putting the a link to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml in the www.fancydomain.com/sitemap.xml -- isn't this against sitemap.org protocol? 2. Is there even a reason to do this? We do have a link to the blog's home page from the www.fancydomain.com navigation, and the blog is set up with its sitemap and link to the sitemap in the footer. 3. What about just including a text link "Blog Sitemap" (linking to blog.fancydomain.com/sitemap_index.html) in the footer of the www.fancydomain.com (adjacent to the text link "Sitemap" which already exists for the www.fancydomain.com's sitemap. Just trying to make sense of this, and figure out why or if it should be done. Thanks!0 -
Sitemaps
I am working with a site that has sitemaps broken down very specifically. By page type: article, page etc and also broken down by Category. Unfortunately, this is not done hierarchically. Category and page type are separate maps, they are not nested. My question here is: Is is detrimental to have two separate sitemaps that point to the same pages? Should we eliminate one of these taxonomies, or maybe just try to make them hierarchical? IE item type -> category -> pagetitle Is there an issue with having a sitemap index that points to a nested sitemap index? (I dont think so, but might as well be sure. Thanks Moz Community! Can't delete my question, but turns out that isn't how they are structured. Food for thought anyway I suppose.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
XML Sitemaps for Message Boards / Forums - Best Practices?
I'm working with a message board that has been around for 10+ years and never taken SEO best practices into consideration. They recently started seeing mobile URLs show up in regular results, which they don't want. I'm recommending they implement multiple sitemaps to properly indicate to Google how to crawl the site and what to index. I've never dealt with a site this large so I'm not sure best practices. They have a HUGE community and new URLs are created every second. Doing a site: search returns "About 12,100,000" URLs. What are some best practices / the best way to approach sitemaps for a site of this size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
URL formating is it worth changing?
One of my clients sites has almost OK URL's, set up something like the following: keyword2_keyword3_keyword1 Ideally the URL's would be more like this: keyword1-keyword2-keyword3 My question is is there any point in changing them and 301 redirecting them over just to get the target keywords in a better order and change the _ to a - ? Has anyone tried this and its worked or not worked, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrouchyKids0