Google’s John Mueller stated once more on Twitter that you need to solely preserve previous URLs which were redirected elsewhere in your XML sitemap file briefly and never long run. John has stated this just a few instances earlier than – however now John is saying preserve them there for one to a few months, versus lower than six months. In truth, John beforehand acknowledged these methods have restricted influence general.

John stated on Twitter this morning “for a short lived state it is positive to have redirects within the sitemap file.” “Long run, you need the URLs listed there that you really want as canonical,” he added.

So sure, your XML sitemaps ought to most likely solely comprise URLs that work correctly and don’t 404 or 301 or 302 to different locations. However within the brief time period, you possibly can have these in place however do not forget about them and ensure to take away these out of your sitemap sooner or later.

John later added “The explanations for that differ: for redirects, the sitemap frivolously helps with recrawling (discovering the redirects). For secure URLs, the sitemap helps with canonicalization.””Momentary is when the transfer is generally full, and also you wish to give attention to the brand new secure state. Virtually, most likely after 1-3 months. To be honest, I believe the impact is minimal these days, however optimizers wish to optimize,” he added.

Listed below are these tweets:

The explanations for that differ: for redirects, the sitemap frivolously helps with recrawling (discovering the redirects). For secure URLs, the sitemap helps with canonicalization.

— 🦝 John (private) 🦝 (@JohnMu) March 30, 2022

Momentary is when the transfer is generally full, and also you wish to give attention to the brand new secure state. Virtually, most likely after 1-3 months. To be honest, I believe the impact is minimal these days, however optimizers wish to optimize 🙂

— 🦝 John (private) 🦝 (@JohnMu) March 30, 2022

Discussion board dialogue at Twitter.