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.
Should Sitemaps be placed in the sub folder they reference?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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!
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
-
Google Search Console Showing 404 errors for product pages not in sitemap?
We have some products with url changes over the past several months. Google is showing these as having 404 errors even though they are not in sitemap (sitemap shows the correct NEW url). Is this expected? Will these errors eventually go away/stop being monitored by Google?
Technical SEO | | woshea0 -
Sitemap error in Webmaster tools - 409 error (conflict)
Hey guys, I'm getting this weird error when I submit my sitemap to Google. It says I'm getting a 409 error in my post-sitemap.xml file (https://cleargear.com/post-sitemap.xml). But when I check it, it looks totally fine. I am using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap.xml file. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a big deal? If so, Does anyone know how to fix? Thanks EwTswL4
Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian0 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hey Mozzers! I'm battling a few questions about the sitemap for my ecommerce store. Could you help me out? Is it necessary to include your product attributes in the sitemap? I'm not sure why it would matter to have a sitemap that lists everything in the color cherry. Also, if the attributes were included in the sitemap, would that count as duplicate content for the same products to show up in multiple attributes? Is there any benefit to submitting the sitemaps individually? For example, submitting /product-sitemap.xml, /product_brand-sitemap.xml versus just /sitemap.xml? Any other best practices for managing my ecommerce sitemap, or great resources, would be very helpful. Thank you! a1vUz
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
Is sitemap required on my robots.txt?
Hi, I know that linking your sitemap from your robots.txt file is a good practice. Ok, but... may I just send my sitemap to search console and forget about adding ti to my robots.txt? That's my situation: 1 multilang platform which means... ... 2 set of pages. One for each lang, of course But my CMS (magento) only allows me to have 1 robots.txt file So, again: may I have a robots.txt file woth no sitemap AND not suffering any potential SEO loss? Thanks in advance, Juan Vicente Mañanas Abad
Technical SEO | | Webicultors0 -
What is the difference between "Referring Pages" and "Total Backlinks" [on Ahrefs]?
I always thought they were essentially the same thing myself but appears there may be a difference? Any one care to help me out? Cheers!
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Should all pagination pages be included in sitemaps
How important is it for a sitemap to include all individual urls for the paginated content. Assuming the rel next and prev tags are set up would it be ok to just have the page 1 in the sitemap ?
Technical SEO | | Saijo.George0 -
Removing Redirected URLs from XML Sitemap
If I'm updating a URL and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new URL, Google recommends I remove the old URL from our XML sitemap and add the new URL. That makes sense. However, can anyone speak to how Google transfers the ranking value (link value) from the old URL to the new URL? My suspicion is this happens outside the sitemap. If Google already has the old URL indexed, the next time it crawls that URL, Googlebot discovers the 301 redirect and that starts the process of URL value transfer. I guess my question revolves around whether removing the old URL (or the timing of the removal) from the sitemap can impact Googlebot's transfer of the old URL value to the new URL.
Technical SEO | | RyanOD0 -
How do I create a Video Sitemap for Youtube Embedded Videos?
I've been seeing a lot of people recommend creating a video sitemap or Media RSS feed (mRSS) and submit to Google. We have videos hosted on Brightcove and most on YouTube. Brightcove can generate the sitemap for us. But does anyone know how to generate a YouTube Video Sitemap for those videos embedded on our pages? Note: I realize I could manually assemble the video sitemap, however manually assembling the sitemap is probably not an option for us due to the volume of videos we've published.
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO1