Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Old deleted sitemap still shown in webmaster tools

    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

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    11387
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Tit
      Tit last edited by

      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

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • zigojacko
        zigojacko last edited by

        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

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • zigojacko
          zigojacko last edited by

          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?

          1. Delete your old sitemap from the server.
          2. Delete your old sitemap from Webmaster Tools.
          3. Submit your new sitemap to Webmaster Tools.
          4. Ping your sitemap to Google here.
          5. Check your web analytics to see what old URL's are still being accessed.
          6. 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.
          7. 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.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • zeepartner
            zeepartner last edited by

            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

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • lgrozeva

              This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com

              Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva
              0
            • Allie_Williams

              Priority Attribute in XML Sitemaps - Still Valid?

              Is the priority value (scale of 0-1) used for each URL in an XML sitemap still a valid way of communicating to search engines which content you (the webmaster) believe is more important relative to other content on your site? I recall hearing that this was no longer used, but can't find a source. If it is no longer used, what are the easiest ways to communicate our preferences to search engines? Specifically, I'm looking to preference the most version version of a product's documentation (version 9) over the previous version (version 8). Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Allie_Williams
              0
            • eugene_bgb

              Hreflang in vs. sitemap?

              Hi all, I decided to identify alternate language pages of my site via sitemap to save our development team some time.  I also like the idea of having leaner markup. However, my site has many alternate language and country page variations, so after creating a sitemap that includes mostly tier 1 and tier 2 level URLs, i now have a sitemap file that's 17mb.  I did a couple google searches to see is sitemap file size can ever be an issue and found a discussion or two that suggested keeping the size small and a really old article that recommended keeping it < 10mb. Does the sitemap file size matter?  GWT has verified the sitemap and appears to be indexing the URLs fine. Are there any particular benefits to specifying alternate versions of a URL in vs. sitemap? Thanks, -Eugene

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eugene_bgb
              0
            • EcommerceSite

              How do I add https version of site to Bing webmaster tools?

              I could add my site to Google Webmaster tools with no problems, but when I try to add it in Bing webmaster tools it just redirects me to what I already have. Everything is staying the same but the switch from http to https. Anyone else experienced this? This is what I just received back from Bing and it doesn't seem right- I understand that you switched to the https version of your site and you're now trying to use the Site Move tool. However, in order to do this, you must verify the https version of your site first. You cannot do this because it just redirects you to the dashboard. We thank you for reporting this to us. We've investigated on this matter and can see that you're already put a redirect from the http to the https version of your site. We also checked the /BingSiteAuth.xml file and this also redirects to the https version. At this point, we suggest that you remove the current website (http version) that is verified through Bing Webmaster Tool and add your https domain. When done, use the Site Move tool. Thoughts?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite
              1
            • netviper

              Is it a good idea to remove old blogs?

              So I have a site right now that isn't ranking well, and we are trying everything to help it out.  One of my areas of concern is we have A LOT of old blogs that were not well written and honestly are not overly relevant.  None of them rank for anything, and could be causing a lot of duplicate content issues.  Our newer blogs are doing better and written in a more Q&A type format and it seems to be doing better. So my thought is basically wipe out all the blogs from 2010-2012 -- probably 450+ blog posts. What do you guys think?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper
              1
            • enotes

              Sitemap on a Subdomain

              Hi, For various reasons I placed my sitemaps on a subdomain where I keep images and other large files (static.example.com). I then submitted this to Google as a separate site in Webmaster tools. Is this a problem? All of the URLs are for the actual site (www.example.com), the only issue on my end is not being able to look at it all at the same time. But I'm wondering if this would cause any problems on Google's end.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | enotes
              0
            • mlm12

              50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???

              Hi All, I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom. I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??. Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow?  Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site? Thanks!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlm12
              0
            • rahul11

              How to do geo targeting for domain and sub directories in Webmaster tool?

              Hello All, How can i do geo targeting in multiple countries on my ** root domain and sub **directories in Webmaster tool. My domain is "abc.com" and i want to target three countries UAE , Kuwait, Saudi arabia. So, Can i assign geo targeting in Webmaster tool ,  Root domain for UAE country and make other two sub directories for Kuwait and saudi ? abc.com - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa - Saudi  (geo targeting) Or Root doamain should be not assign for any country and Make three sub directories for UAE, Kuwait , and saudi and targeting them there geo locations. abc.com - Unlisted (geo targeting) abc.com/uae/ - UAE (geo targeting) abc.com/kw/ - Kuwait (geo targeting) abc.com/sa/ - Saudi  (geo targeting)

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rahul11
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.