Old deleted sitemap still shown in webmaster tools
-
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
-
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
-
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?
- Delete your old sitemap from the server.
- Delete your old sitemap from Webmaster Tools.
- Submit your new sitemap to Webmaster Tools.
- Ping your sitemap to Google here.
- Check your web analytics to see what old URL's are still being accessed.
- 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.
- 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.
-
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
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
-
Should I submit an additional sitemap to speed up indexing
Hi all, Wondered if there was any wisdom on this that anyone could impart my way? I'm moving a set of pages from one area of the site to another - to bring them up the folder structure, and so they generally make more sense. Our URLs are very long in some cases, so this ought to help with some rationalisation there too. We will have redirects in place, but the pages I'm moving are important and I'd like the new paths to be indexed as soon as possible. In such an instance, can I submit an additional sitemap with just these URLs to get them indexed quicker (or to reaffirm that indexing from the initial parse)? The site is thousands of pages. Any benefits / disadvantages anyone could think of? Any thoughts very gratefully received.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ceecee0 -
Old pages STILL indexed...
Our new website has been live for around 3 months and the URL structure has completely changed. We weren't able to dynamically create 301 redirects for over 5,000 of our products because of how different the URL's were so we've been redirecting them as and when. 3 months on and we're still getting hundreds of 404 errors daily in our Webmaster Tools account. I've checked the server logs and it looks like Bing Bot still seems to want to crawl our old /product/ URL's. Also, if I perform a "site:example.co.uk/product" on Google or Bing - lots of results are still returned, indicating the both still haven't dropped them from their index. Should I ignore the 404 errors and continue to wait for them to drop off or should I just block /product/ in my robots.txt? After 3 months I'd have thought they'd have naturally dropped off by now! I'm half-debating this: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LiamMcArthur
Disallow: /some-directory-for-all/* User-agent: Bingbot
User-agent: MSNBot
Disallow: /product/ Sitemap: http://www.example.co.uk/sitemap.xml0 -
Need help with Google Webmaster Tools Errors
I have a lots of error on my Google webmaster tools under Search Appearance -> Structure Data there are two sets of items 1- "hentry" and source is "Markup: microformats.org" and error says: "Missing: author | Missing: updated" 2-"hcard" and source is "Markup: microformats.org" and error says: "Missing: fn" I am using WordPress. Can anybody tell me how to fix these errors please. Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani1 -
Did Reviews still have the same value in Google places ranking?
I have two questions relating to Reviews. 1. Reviews still add value to Google places ranking. 2. I have a page and two clients posted reviews for me.They all get removed after 3,4 days.What is wrong with Google?Did they consider them fake?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csfarnsworth0 -
How to 301 redirect old wordpress category?
Hi All, In order to avoid duplication errors we've decided to redirect old categories (merge some categories).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
In the past we have been very generous with the number of categories we assigned each post. One category needs to be redirected back to blog home (removed completely) while a couple others should be merged. Afterwords we will re-categorize some of the old posts. What is the proper way to do so?
We are not technical, Is there a plugin that can assist? Thanks0 -
URL errors in Google Webmaster Tool
Hi Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found. By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them. One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix? There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help. Many thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5551 -
Sitemaps recommend by google
Google in it guideline recommends to create a sitemap. Do they means a /sitemap.xml or does it need to be sitemap directly on the website ? Does it make any difference ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Submitting URLs multiple times in different sitemaps
We have a very dynamic site, with a large number of pages. We use a sitemap index file, that points to several smaller sitemap files. The question is: Would there be any issue if we include the same URL in multiple sitemap files? Scenario: URL1 appears on sitemap1. 2 weeks later, the page at URL1 changes and we'd like to update it on a sitemap. Would it be acceptable to add URL1 as an entry in sitemap2? Would there be any issues with the same URL appearing multiple times? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | msquare0