Should Sitemaps be placed in the sub folder they reference?

[Giovatto]

I have a sitemap-index.xml file in the root. I then have several sitemaps linked to from the index in example.com/sitemaps/sitemap1.xml, example.com/sitemaps/sitemap2.xml, etc. I have seen on other sites that for example a sitemap containing blogs where the blogs are located at example.com/blog/blog1/ would be located at example.com/blog/sitemap.xml. Is it necessary to have the sitemap located in the same folder like this? I would like to have all sitemaps in a single sitemap folder for convenience but not if it will confuse search engines. My index count for URLs in some sitemaps has dropped dramatically in Google Webmaster Tools over the past month or so and I'm not sure if this is having an effect. If it matters, I have all sitemap files, including the index, listed in the robots.txt file.

[Giovatto]

By giving me that link you indirectly answered my question so thanks!

A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/.

Having all my sitemaps in a /sitemaps/ folder meant that each of those sitemaps could only include URLs beginning with example.com/sitemaps/. I moved all my sub-sitemaps to my root (similar to how wordpress does it) so that they cover the scope of my entire site.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

According to this resource you can have multiple sitemaps set up for specific folders and it won't confuse the search engines, so long as they are properly linked to from the main sitemap.

If you don't want to include different sitemaps for different subfolders, you don't have to. Just make sure URLs are probably listed in the main XML sitemap and it is properly uploaded to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Hope this helps!