Should sitemap include https pages?

[G.Anderson]

Hi guys,

Trying to figure out some onsite issues I've been having. Would appreciate any feedback on the following 2 questions:

My homepage (http://mysite.com) is a 301 redirect to https://mysite.com, which is under SSL. Only 2 pages of my site are https, the rest are http.

1. Should the directory of my sitemap be https://mysite.com/sitemap.xml or should it be kept with http (even though the redirected homepage is to https)?

2. Should my sitemap include the https pages (only 2 pages) as well as the http?

Thanks,

G

[G.Anderson]

Hi Frederico,

On the google Sitemaps Errors help page, they include the following information:

"You should also check that the URLs all begin with the same domain as your Sitemap location. For instance, if your Sitemap is listed under http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml, the following URLs are not valid for that Sitemap:

• http://www.google.com — it's in the google.com domain rather than the example.com domain
• http://example.com/ — it's missing the initial www
• www.example.com/ — it's missing the protocol (http), and will generate an Invalid URL warning
• https://www.example.com/ — it's using a different protocol (https rather than http)

Any URLs in the Sitemap that are not denied are processed normally."

This leads me to understand that Google don't want you to put http urls in an https sitemap and also vice-versa. What makes you believe otherwise??

Hoping to get to the bottom of this - thanks for the ongoing feedback

[FedeEinhorn]

Those suggesting not to add the SSL pages to the HTTP sitemap are using data back from 2007, when indeed Google showed an error on those sitemaps listing both HTTP and HTTPS pages as they were being recognized as different domains. Those days are long gone. Google had evolved and can now handle sitemaps with both HTTP and HTTPS pages just fine.

[G.Anderson]

Thanks for the input Frederico. I've been receiving various different answers to this question.

Most responses have said that we should submit 2 sitemaps: 1 sitemap listed under http that only includes the http pages of the site (which means we wouldn't include our homepage since it's under https!!!).

And 1 sitemap listed on the https version which only includes the https pages (which is only 2 pages!).

To be honest, I still don't know what to do here. Really frustrating that there is no clear cut answer to our situation, which I can't believe is even that unique.

[FedeEinhorn]

G,

It wouldn't do any difference to serve the sitemap over HTTP or HTTPS. As for the http and https pages within the same sitemap, it isn't a problem either.

The only reason I can find for creating multiple sitemaps is for HTML pages, images or videos that do require separate sitemaps.

Does you site uses PHP? If yes, I suggest you test xml-sitemaps.com and it will create the full sitemap for you. If you have a dynamic site, then I suggest getting their commercial version. I've been using it for over 7 years I think and I always get a copy for each site I create. And they offer lots of extras in case you need them (news sitemaps, etc).

[G.Anderson]

Hey Federico,

Thanks again for the insight - much appreciated.

So there's no problem for us to create a sitemap that has the https homepage and then the rest of the pages in http? From reading previous Q&As on this topic it seems as though people felt you shouldn't have https and http pages under the same sitemap - I am a novice here so that's why I'm just looking for advice.

Is there any reason why we would need to have the two sitemaps available - as in, why wouldn't we just remove the old http sitemap (that didn't include the https homepage) and just go with the https homepage sitemap?

I just wanted to make sure I understood your response before we take action.

Cheers,

-G

[FedeEinhorn]

Hey G!

You can serve your sitemap in both versions, that won't be any problem and won't trigger the duplicate content issue. So you are safe both ways.

As for the second question: Yes, you should, unless you don't want your pages indexed (any HTTP or HTTPS). I think I saw your site before, and if I remember correctly you had your homepage and login script under SSL, right? Then you should definitely include your homepage in the sitemap but you can leave the login script file out as you don't need that indexed nor google will index it either.

Once you have your sitemap ready, consider including a path in the robots file, like this:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://[your website address here]/sitemap.xml

Hope that helps!