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.
2 sitemaps on my robots.txt?
-
Hi,
I thought that I just could link one sitemap from my site's robots.txt but... I may be wrong.
So, I need to confirm if this kind of implementation is right or wrong:
robots.txt for Magento Community and Enterprise
...
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.es/media/sitemap/es.xml
Sitemap: http://www.mysite.pt/media/sitemap/pt.xmlThanks in advance,
-
We recently changed our protocol to https
We have in our robots.txt our new https sitemap link
Our agency is recommending we add another sitemap in our robots.txt file to our insecure sitemap - while google is reindexing our secure protocol. They recommend this as a way for all SEs to pick up on 301 redirects and swap out unsecured results in the index more efficiently.
Do you agree with this?
I am in the camp that we should have have our https sitemap and google will figure it out and having 2 sitemaps one to our old http and one to our new https in our robots.txt is redundant and may be viewed as duplicate content, not as a positive of helping SEs to see 301s better to reindex secure links.
Whats your thought? Let me know if I need to explain more.
-
Well if both sitemaps are for same site then it's OK. But it's much better to implement hreflang as this is explained here:https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
I'm not sure that Magento can do this but you always can hire 3rd party dev for building plugin/module for this.
-
ok, just one detail: these domains are for a multilang site.
I mean, both have quite the same content: one in spanish and the other un portuguese.
Thanks a lot.
-
You can also have multiple sitemaps on 3rd sites. Look at Moz robots.txt:
Sitemap: https://moz.com/blog-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://moz.com/ugc-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: https://moz.com/profiles-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://d2eeipcrcdle6.cloudfront.net/past-videos.xml
Sitemap: http://app.wistia.com/sitemaps/36357.xmlAlso Google.com robots.txt:
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/culturalinstitute/sitemaps/www_google_com_culturalinstitute/sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sitemaps/sitemap_index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/earth/gallery/sitemaps/sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/s2/sitemaps/profiles-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/trends/websites/sitemaps/sitemapindex.xml
Sitemap: https://www.google.com/sitemap.xmlAlso Bing.com robots.txt:
Sitemap: http://cn.bing.com/dict/sitemap-index.xml
Sitemap: http://www.bing.com/offers/sitemap.xmlSo using multiple sitemaps it's OK and they can be also hosted on 3rd party server.
-
Hello,
Yes, multiple sitemaps are okay, and sometimes even advised!
You can read Google's official response here."..it's fine for multiple Sitemaps to live in the same directory (as many as you want!)..."
And you can see a case study showing how multiple sitemaps has helped traffic here on Moz.
Hope this helps,
Don
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
-
GA4 showing 2 versions of my homepage
When my website Custom Made Casino switched from universal analytics to GA, i have noticed that now in the behavior section it is showing 2 versions of my homepage which I feel may be impacting seo. It is showing the main url which we use for everything, https://custommadecasino.com/ , and it is showing https://custommadecasino.com/index.php?route-common/home. This was never the case with universal. Does anyone know if this is a problem and if so, how do i fix it so that our proper homepage is what is indexed?
Technical SEO | | CustomMadeCasino0 -
Upgrade old sitemap to a new sitemap index. How to do without danger ?
Hi MOZ users and friends. I have a website that have a php template developed by ourselves, and a wordpress blog in /blog/ subdirectory. Actually we have a sitemap.xml file in the root domain where are all the subsections and blog's posts. We upgrade manually the sitemap, once a month, adding the new posts created in the blog. I want to automate this process , so i created a sitemap index with two sitemaps inside it. One is the old sitemap without the blog's posts and a new one created with "Google XML Sitemap" wordpress plugin, inside the /blog/ subdirectory. That is, in the sitemap_index.xml file i have: Domain.com/sitemap.xml (old sitemap after remove blog posts urls) Domain.com/blog/sitemap.xml (auto-updatable sitemap create with Google XML plugin) Now i have to submit this sitemap index to Google Search Console, but i want to be completely sure about how to do this. I think that the only that i have to do is delete the old sitemap on Search Console and upload the new sitemap index, is it ok ?
Technical SEO | | ClaudioHeilborn0 -
Robots.txt on http vs. https
We recently changed our domain from http to https. When a user enters any URL on http, there is an global 301 redirect to the same page on https. I cannot find instructions about what to do with robots.txt. Now that https is the canonical version, should I block the http-Version with robots.txt? Strangely, I cannot find a single ressource about this...
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
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.
Technical SEO | | ashishb010 -
2 Versions of Same Homepage
We want to show new and returning visitors different versions of our homepage (same URL) What, if anything, should we use as the markup to tell Google what we are doing?
Technical SEO | | theLotter
Any danger that Google will think we are cloaking? Thanks!0 -
Will an XML sitemap override a robots.txt
I have a client that has a robots.txt file that is blocking an entire subdomain, entirely by accident. Their original solution, not realizing the robots.txt error, was to submit an xml sitemap to get their pages indexed. I did not think this tactic would work, as the robots.txt would take precedent over the xmls sitemap. But it worked... I have no explanation as to how or why. Does anyone have an answer to this? or any experience with a website that has had a clear Disallow: / for months , that somehow has pages in the index?
Technical SEO | | KCBackofen0 -
Is there a suggested limit to the amount of links on a sitemap?
Currently, I have an error on my moz dashboard indicating there are too many links on one of my pages. That page is the sitemap. It was my understanding all internal pages should be linked to the sitemap. Can any mozzers help clarify the best practice here? Thanks, Clayton
Technical SEO | | JorgeUmana0 -
Sitemap for dynamic website with over 10,000 pages
If I have a website with thousands of products, is it a good idea to create a sitemap for this website for the search engines where you show maybe 250 products on a page so it makes it easy for the search engine to find the part and also puts that part closer to the home page? Seems like google likes pages that are the closest to the home page (less clicks the better)
Technical SEO | | roundbrix0