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Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
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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.
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Hi Ashish,
Add the new version and delete the old. Retaining the old sitemap shouldn't flag you for duplicate content, however, it doesn't make sense to tell Google to crawl those pages if they are just going to redirect to new pages that are in the new sitemap. Extra work for GoogleBot.
Hope this helps!
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