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.
Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
-
Hi,
Just finished upgrading my site to the ssl version (like so many other webmasters now that it may be a ranking factor).
FIxed all links, CDN links are now secure, etc and 301 Redirected all pages from http to https.
Changed property in Google Analytics from http to https and added https version in Webmaster Tools. So far, so good.
Now the question is should I add the https version of the sitemap in the new HTTPS site in webmasters or retain the existing http one? Ideally switching over completely to https version by adding a new sitemap would make more sense as the http version of the sitemap would anyways now be re-directed to HTTPS.
But the last thing i can is to get penalized for duplicate content. Could you please suggest as I am still a rookie in this department. If I should add the https sitemap version in the new site, should i delete the old http one or no harm retaining it.
-
Hi Ashish,
Add the new version and delete the old. Retaining the old sitemap shouldn't flag you for duplicate content, however, it doesn't make sense to tell Google to crawl those pages if they are just going to redirect to new pages that are in the new sitemap. Extra work for GoogleBot.
Hope this helps!
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
-
GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2
Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | AKCAC1 -
Should I Focus on Video Schema or a Video Sitemap First
Hey all, I'm working on a website that is soon going to launch a video hub that contains over 500 videos. I'm interested in ensuring that the videos show up on the SERPs page in the highest position possible. I know Google recommends that you have on-page schema for your videos as well as an XML sitemap so they can be indexed for SERP. When I look at schema and the XML video sitemap they seem to communicate very similar kinds of information (Title, Description, Thumbnail, Duration). I'm not sure which one to start with; is it more important to have video schema or a video sitemap? Additionally, if anyone knows of any good video sitemap generators (free is best, but cheap is okay too) then please let me know. Cursory google searching has just churned up a number of tools that look sketchy.
Technical SEO | | perfectsearch710 -
Redirecting old Sitemaps to a new XML
I've discovered a ton of 404s from Google's WMT crawler looking for mydomain.com/sitemap_archive_MONTH_YEAR. There are tons of these monthly archive xmls. I've used a plugin that for some reason created individual monthly archive xml sitemaps and now I get 404s. Creating rules for each archive seems a bad solution. My current sitemap plugin creates a single clean one mydomain.com/sitemap_index.xml. How can I create a redirect rule in the Redirection WP plugin that will redirect any URL that has the 'sitemap' and 'xml' string in it to my current xml sitemap? I've tried using a wildcard like so: mysite.com/sitemap*.*, mysite.com/sitemap ., mysite.com/sitemap(.), mysite.com/sitemap (.) but none of the wildcard uses got the general redirect to work. Is there a way to make this happen with the WP Redirection plugin? If not, is there a htaccess rule, and what would the code be for it? Im not very fluent with using general redirects in htaccess unfortunately. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | IgorMateski0 -
WordPress - How to stop both http:// and https:// pages being indexed?
Just published a static page 2 days ago on WordPress site but noticed that Google has indexed both http:// and https:// url's. Usually I only get http:// indexed though. Could anyone please explain why this may have happened and how I can fix? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Clicksjim1 -
How would you create and then segment a large sitemap?
I have a site with around 17,000 pages and would like to create a sitemap and then segment it into product categories. Is it best to create a map and then edit it in something like xmlSpy or is there a way to silo sitemap creation from the outset?
Technical SEO | | SystemIDBarcodes0 -
Do I need an XML sitemap?
I have an established website that ranks well in Google. However, I have just noticed that no xml sitemap has been registered in Google webmaster tools, so the likelihood is that it hasn't been registered with the other search engines. However, there is an html sitemap listed on the website. Seeing as the website is already ranking well, do I still need to generate and submit an XML sitemap? Could there be any detriment to current rankings in doing so?
Technical SEO | | pugh0 -
How to generate a visual sitemap using sitemap.xml
Are there any tools (online preferably) which will take a sitemap.xml file and generate a visual site map? Seems like an obvious thing to do, but can't find any simple tools for this?
Technical SEO | | k3nn3dy30 -
XML Sitemap without PHP
Is it possible to generate an XML sitemap for a site without PHP? If so, how?
Technical SEO | | jeffreytrull11