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.
Should sitemap include https pages?
-
Hi guys,
Trying to figure out some onsite issues I've been having. Would appreciate any feedback on the following 2 questions:
My homepage (http://mysite.com) is a 301 redirect to https://mysite.com, which is under SSL. Only 2 pages of my site are https, the rest are http.
-
Should the directory of my sitemap be https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml or should it be kept with http (even though the redirected homepage is to https)?
-
Should my sitemap include the https pages (only 2 pages) as well as the http?
Thanks,
G
-
-
Hi Frederico,
On the google Sitemaps Errors help page, they include the following information:
"You should also check that the URLs all begin with the same domain as your Sitemap location. For instance, if your Sitemap is listed under http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml, the following URLs are not valid for that Sitemap:
http://www.google.com— it's in the google.com domain rather than the example.com domainhttp://example.com/— it's missing the initialwwwwww.example.com/— it's missing the protocol (http), and will generate an Invalid URL warninghttps://www.example.com/— it's using a different protocol (httpsrather thanhttp)
Any URLs in the Sitemap that are not denied are processed normally."
This leads me to understand that Google don't want you to put http urls in an https sitemap and also vice-versa. What makes you believe otherwise??
Hoping to get to the bottom of this - thanks for the ongoing feedback
-
Those suggesting not to add the SSL pages to the HTTP sitemap are using data back from 2007, when indeed Google showed an error on those sitemaps listing both HTTP and HTTPS pages as they were being recognized as different domains. Those days are long gone. Google had evolved and can now handle sitemaps with both HTTP and HTTPS pages just fine.
-
Thanks for the input Frederico. I've been receiving various different answers to this question.
Most responses have said that we should submit 2 sitemaps: 1 sitemap listed under http that only includes the http pages of the site (which means we wouldn't include our homepage since it's under https!!!).
And 1 sitemap listed on the https version which only includes the https pages (which is only 2 pages!).
To be honest, I still don't know what to do here. Really frustrating that there is no clear cut answer to our situation, which I can't believe is even that unique.
-
G,
It wouldn't do any difference to serve the sitemap over HTTP or HTTPS. As for the http and https pages within the same sitemap, it isn't a problem either.
The only reason I can find for creating multiple sitemaps is for HTML pages, images or videos that do require separate sitemaps.
Does you site uses PHP? If yes, I suggest you test xml-sitemaps.com and it will create the full sitemap for you. If you have a dynamic site, then I suggest getting their commercial version. I've been using it for over 7 years I think and I always get a copy for each site I create. And they offer lots of extras in case you need them (news sitemaps, etc).
-
Hey Federico,
Thanks again for the insight - much appreciated.
So there's no problem for us to create a sitemap that has the https homepage and then the rest of the pages in http? From reading previous Q&As on this topic it seems as though people felt you shouldn't have https and http pages under the same sitemap - I am a novice here so that's why I'm just looking for advice.
Is there any reason why we would need to have the two sitemaps available - as in, why wouldn't we just remove the old http sitemap (that didn't include the https homepage) and just go with the https homepage sitemap?
I just wanted to make sure I understood your response before we take action.
Cheers,
-G
-
Hey G!
You can serve your sitemap in both versions, that won't be any problem and won't trigger the duplicate content issue. So you are safe both ways.
As for the second question: Yes, you should, unless you don't want your pages indexed (any HTTP or HTTPS). I think I saw your site before, and if I remember correctly you had your homepage and login script under SSL, right? Then you should definitely include your homepage in the sitemap but you can leave the login script file out as you don't need that indexed nor google will index it either.
Once you have your sitemap ready, consider including a path in the robots file, like this:
User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://[your website address here]/sitemap.xmlHope that 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
-
Rel canonical tag from shopify page to wordpress site page
We have pages on our shopify site example - https://shop.example.com/collections/cast-aluminum-plaques/products/cast-aluminum-address-plaque That we want to put a rel canonical tag on to direct to our wordpress site page - https://www.example.com/aluminum-plaques/ We have links form the wordpress page to the shop page, and over time ahve found that google has ranked the shop pages over the wp pages, which we do not want. So we want to put rel canonical tags on the shop pages to say the wp page is the authority. I hope that makes sense, and I would appreciate your feeback and best solution. Thanks! Is that possible?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shabbirmoosa0 -
Pending Sitemaps
Hi, all Wondering if someone could give me a pointer or two, please. I cannot seem to get Google or Bing to crawl my sitemap. If I submit the sitemap in WMT and test it I get a report saying 44,322urls found. However, if I then submit that same sitemap it either says Pending (in old WMT) or Couldn't fetch in the new version. This couldn't fetch is very puzzling as it had no issue fetching the map to test it. My other domains on the same server are fine, the problem is limited to this one site. I have tried several pages on the site using the Fetch as Google tool and they load without issue, however, try as I may, it will not fetch my sitemap. The sitemapindex.xml file won't even submit. I can confirm my sitemaps, although large, work fine, please see the following as an example (minus the spaces, of course, didn't want to submit and make it look like I was just trying to get a link) https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemap.xml https:// digitalcatwalk .co.uk/sitemapindex.xml I would welcome any feedback anyone could offer on this, please. It's driving me mad trying to work out what is up. Many thanks, Jeff
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wonkydogadmin0 -
Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
Category Page as Shopping Aggregator Page
Hi, I have been reviewing the info from Google on structured data for products and started to ponder.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexcox6
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products Here is the scenario.
You have a Category Page and it lists 8 products, each products shows an image, price and review rating. As the individual products pages are already marked up they display Rich Snippets in the serps.
I wonder how do we get the rich snippets for the category page. Now Google suggest a markup for shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product but nothing for categories. My ponder is this, Can we use the shopping aggregator markup for category pages to achieve the coveted rich results (from and to price, average reviews)? Keen to hear from anyone who has had any thoughts on the matter or had already tried this.0 -
Multiple pages optimised for the same keywords but pages are functionally different and visually different
Hi MOZ community! We're wondering what the implications would be on organic ranking by having 2 pages, which have quite different functionality were optimised for the same keywords. So, for example, one of the pages in question is
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
https://www.whichledlight.com/categories/led-spotlights
and the other page is
https://www.whichledlight.com/t/led-spotlights both of these pages are basically geared towards the keyword led spotlights the first link essentially shows the options for led spotlights, the different kind of fittings available, and the second link is a product search / results page for all products that are spotlights. We're wondering what the implications of this could be, as we are currently looking to improve the ranking for the site particularly for this keyword. Is this even safe to do? Especially since we're at the bottom of the hill of climbing the ranking ladder of this keyword. Give us a shout if you want any more detail on this to answer more easily 🙂0 -
Hreflang and paginated page
Hi, I can not seem to find good documentation about the use of hreflang and paginated page when using rel=next , rel=prev
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TjeerdvZ
Does any know where to find decent documentatio?, I could only find documentation about pagination and hreflang when using canonicals on the paginated page. I have doubts on what is the best option: The way tripadvisor does it:
http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-oa390-Corsica-Hotels.html
Each paginated page is referring to it's hreflang paginated page, for example: So should the hreflang refer to the pagined specific page or should it refer to the "1st" page? in this case:
http://www.tripadvisor.nl/Hotels-g187139-Corsica-Hotels.html Looking foward to your suggestions.0 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
XML Sitemap for classifieds
I have seeon some trends for sites which do not even use XML sitemp and robots e.g. see this site. How do you see if sitemap is not used. Also for classified websites, should ad pages be included in sitemap because after certain duration those ads will be deleted and google might not be able to crawl. What do you suggest about XML sitemap for classified website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0