Changing the XML Sitemap address
-
For technical reason we are having to change our XML sitemap URL's from domain.com/sitemap.xml to domain.com/sitemaps/sitemap.xml - What checklist do I need to do to make sure this transition goes smoothly and is there any problems that I might come across?
-
Just ensure you update robots.txt with the new address. Re-submit the new sitemap to the search engines. Should be as simple as that. Your URLs have not changed.
Your sitemap does not determine the indexing of all URLs but gives the search engines a good idea what to crawl, on top of being able to crawl from URL to URL on the site. It mainly is to help you see what has been indexed in comparison to what you have submitted. Unfortunately Webmaster Tools is not fully to speed anyway so may not show the same results as site:some-domain.com.
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
-
URL indexed but not submitted in sitemap, however the URL is in the sitemap
Dear Community, I have the following problem and would be super helpful if you guys would be able to help. Cheers Symptoms : On the search console, Google says that some of our old URLs are indexed but not submitted in sitemap However, those URLs are in the sitemap Also the sitemap as been successfully submitted. No error message Potential explanation : We have an automatic cache clearing process within the company once a day. In the sitemap, we use this as last modification date. Let's imagine url www.example.com/hello was modified last time in 2017. But because the cache is cleared daily, in the sitemap we will have last modified : yesterday, even if the content of the page did not changed since 2017. We have a Z after sitemap time, can it be that the bot does not understands the time format ? We have in the sitemap only http URL. And our HTTPS URLs are not in the sitemap What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZozoMe0 -
URL change - Sitemap update / redirect
Hi everyone Recently we performed a massive, hybrid site migration (CMS, URL, site structure change) without losing any traffic (yay!). Today I am finding out that our developers+copy writers decided to change Some URLs (pages are the same) without notifying anyone (I'm not going into details why). Anyhow, some URLs in site map changed, so old URLs don't exist anymore. Here is the example: OLD (in sitemap, indexed): https://www.domain.com/destinations/massachusetts/dennis-port NEW: https://www.domain.com/destinations/massachusetts/cape-cod Also, you should know that there is a number of redirects that happened in the past (whole site) Example : Last couple years redirections: HTTP to HTTPS non-www to www trailing slash to no trailing slash Most recent (a month ago ) Site Migration Redirects (URLs / site structure change) So I could add new URLs to the sitemap and resubmit in GSC. My dilemma is what to do with old URL? So we already have a ton of redirects and adding another one is not something I'm in favor of because of redirect loops and issues that can affect our SEO efforts. I would suggest to change the original, most recent 301 redirects and point to the new URL ( pre-migration 301 redirect to newly created URL). The goal is not to send mixed signals to SEs and not to lose visibility. Any advice? Please let me know if you need more clarification. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Changing title tags - any potential issues?
Hello all, I am planning to change the title tags throughout a site and am vaguely aware (perhaps wrongly!) that changing title tags across a site is a risk factor - can be a spam flag if changes (to a specific title tag) are implemented too regularly, for example. Would you change title tags across a site in one go, or implement changes gradually - to avoid any risk of upsetting Google. Do you have any insights/tips on the implementation of title tag changes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Changing Brand and Domain Name - SEO Impacts
Hi everyone I'm hoping a few of you can help me out... We're an online-one retailer and we're currently looking at rebranding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | piazza
This is for commercial reasons: Our current name is difficult for customers to spell It's not wholly representative of what we now offer We want to push offline and social marketing to help increase or DA In a nutshell, our current name implies 'cheap' and we're moving more upmarket.
Our DA is only 10, and a re-brand will make our brand more marketable.
A stronger brand and DA will help us climb up the rankings quickly - last year we ranked no 1 for a relatively competitive term before dropping a few places. In terms of current traffic: 30% is via SEO (we have a low DA but rank ok for certain phrases) 70% is via adwords We had our website redesigned last year and it performs well.
The idea is to have a new brand logo and colours and move to a new domain.
We will keep all our existing products and content. Please could anyone let me know the implications of this move?
What are potential pitfalls, and what will we need to do to alert Google?
I have read about 301 redirects, would these be required? As always, any help is very much appreciated. Many thanks Abs0 -
Change in sitemap from XML to PHP caused to lose all organic rankings
Hi MOZers, I need some advice for my website: http://www.scorepromotions.ca/ I recently changed the sitemap submitted to GWT from http://www.scorepromotions.ca/sitemap.xml to http://www.scorepromotions.ca/google-sitemap.php I deleted the previously submitted XML sitemap from GWT on Friday & submitted the PHP sitemap on the advice of our developer. On Saturday, I noticed that all our organic rankings disappeared. So, I changed the PHP sitemap back to XML sitemap on Sunday. I am hoping to see my organic rankings recover to previous levels. Does anyone have any advice or experience to share about this issue ? Ankush
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScorePromotions0 -
WIX? How to change URLS and is it any good for SEO
I have Wix website and want to change its url structure, but not able to do so, any one know how to do so?. Does below URLs work for SEO? And Is Wix is good for SEO or not? abc.com/#!how-it-works/c46c abc.com/#!party-event/c1lzb
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
Changing links after 301 already in place: is it nessasary?
Hi:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | romanbond
I'm in the process of making sure I have a single URL that gets all link juice for every page. As the first step, I'm implementing 301 redirects. My question is: After 301 redirect is in place will it still be necessary to update links on my site(s) that point to the old URLs. For example, I just 301-redirected mysite.com/folder/index.html to mysite.com/folder/ - and it works fine, but I still have many links on the same site and other sites that link to mysite.com/folder/index.html. Is it important to change those links to mysite.com/folder/ as well or could I just leave them as they are since the 301 is taking care of the redirect anyway.. I mean, I will probably change them in time, just to keep things tidy. But if it's important I would definitely do it sooner rather than later. Thank you in advance.0 -
IP address being indexed by Google in addition to canonical domain.
Our site's IP address is being indexed in addition to the canonical www.example.com domain. As soon as it was flagged a 301 was implemented in the .htaccess file to redirect the IP address to the canonical. Does this usually occur? Is it detrimental to SEO? In my time in SEO I've never heard of this being an issue, or being part of a list of things to be checked. It sounds more like a server that wasn't configured correctly when hosting was set up? It didn't seem to be affecting the site at all, but is it more common and I've just never heard of it? 😛 Should it be something I'm usually looking for in future? Responses are greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mikeimrie0