Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Old deleted sitemap still shown in webmaster tools
-
Hello
I have redisgned a website inl new url structure in cms.
Old sitemap was not set to 404 but changed with new sitemap files,also new sitemap was named different to old one.All redirections done properly
Still 3 month after google still shows me duplicate titile and metas by comparing old and new urls
I am lost in what to do now to eliminate the shown error. How can google show urls that are not shown in sitemap any more?
Looking forward to any help
Michelles
-
Hi Michelle,
So you're 404'ing the old sitemap URL yet you've placed the new sitemap at the same location...? If you want to private message me your domain, I'd be happy to take a look for you.
There should be no need to 404 anything, just replace the old sitemap and Google will do the rest. Alternatively, just recreate the new sitemap index at a new location such as domain.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml.
Thanks
-
Is the problem that you have old URL's still indexed in Google or that Google Webmaster Tools is just displaying / accessing your old sitemap?
- Delete your old sitemap from the server.
- Delete your old sitemap from Webmaster Tools.
- Submit your new sitemap to Webmaster Tools.
- Ping your sitemap to Google here.
- Check your web analytics to see what old URL's are still being accessed.
- If the old URL's still won't leave Google's index you can either block them with robots.txt, request a index removal request within Webmaster Tools.
- You can also add your new sitemap to your robots.txt so search engines know where they should be looking.
Let me know if none of the above answers your question.
-
that's a known issue - Google Webmaster Tools is very slow in de-indexing old sitemaps, even if they are removed from GWT. I have the same issue with some sites and it's pretty annoying because it makes it harder to discover the real 404s.
also refer to this helpful article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-fix-crawl-errors-in-google-webmaster-tools
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded in Google webmaster tools.
In Google Webmaster Tools, I have a coverage issue. I am getting this error message: Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded. It gives the below blog post page as an example. Any idea how to resolve? At one time, I was using handl utm grabber, but the plugin is deactivated on my website. https://www.savacations.com/turrialba-costa-ricas-garden-city/?utm_source=deleted&utm_medium=deleted&utm_term=deleted&utm_content=deleted&utm_campaign=deleted&gclid=deleted5.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alancito0 -
Tool for user intent
Hello, Is there a tool that can tell me what the user intent of my keyword is and how I should present my page (the type of content users want to see it, what questions they want answered ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Tool to bulk check outbound links
Hi. I have a list of 50 domains I need to check for links to three different sites. Does anybody know an easy way to do this? The best solution I have found so far is to crawl each with Screaming Frog and search for the domains, but I can only do one at a time this way. Some way to speed it up would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Why is my servers ip address showing up in Webmaster Tools?
In links to my site in Google Webmaster Tools I am showing over 28,000 links from an ip address. The ip address is the address that my server is hosted on. For example it shows 200.100.100.100/help, almost like there are two copies of my site, one under the domain name and one under the ip address. Is this bad? Or is it just showing up there and Google knows that it is the same since the ip and domain are from the same server?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Limit on Google Removal Tool?
I'm dealing with thousands of duplicate URL's caused by the CMS... So I am using some automation to get through them - What is the daily limit? weekly? monthly? Any ideas?? thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
How Do I Generate a Sitemap for a Large Wordpress Site?
Hello Everyone! I am working with a Wordpress site that is in Google news (i.e. everyday we have about 30 new URLs to add to our sitemap) The site has years of articles, resulting in about 200,000 pages on the site. Our strategy so far has been use a sitemap plugin that only generates the last few months of posts, however we want to improve our SEO and submit all the URLs in our site to search engines. The issue is the plugins we've looked at generate the sitemap on-the-fly. i.e. when you request the sitemap, the plugin then dynamically generates the sitemap. Our site is so large that even a single request for our sitemap.xml ties up tons of server resources and takes an extremely long time to generate the sitemap (if the page doesn't time out in the process). Does anyone have a solution? Thanks, Aaron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alloydigital0 -
What should be done with old news articles?
Hello, We have a portal website that gives information about the industry we work in. This website includes various articles, tips, info, reviews and more about the industry.We also have a news section that was previously indexed in Google news but is not for the past few month.The site was hit by Panda over a year ago and one of the things we have been thinking of doing is removing pages that are irrelavant/do not provide added value to the site.Some of these pages are old news articles posted over 3-4 years ago and that have had hardly any traffic to.All the news articles on the site are under a /archive/ folder sorted by month and year, so for example a url for a news item from April 2010 would be /archive/042010/article-nameMy question is do you think removing such news articles would benefit the site helping it get out of Panda (many other things have been done in the site as well), if not what is the best suggested way to keep these articles on the site in a way which Google indexes them and treats them well.thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
Should I use both Google and Bing's Webmaster Tools at the same time?
Hi All, Up till now I've been registered only to Google WMT. Do you recommend using at the same time Bing's WMT? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0