Q: We migrated but our sitemap still lists the old URLs. Is that causing the crawl errors?
A: Very likely, and it's a quick fix. Short answer: a sitemap full of old, now-redirecting URLs feeds Google a list of pages that all 301 — confusing signals and wasted crawl budget.
Long answer: Your XML sitemap should be a clean list of your final, live URLs (200 status). When it still lists old addresses, Google keeps crawling redirects, reports "page with redirect" warnings, and is slower to settle on the new URLs. This happens when a sitemap plugin caches the old set or a static sitemap file gets carried over from the old build.
The fix:
— Regenerate the sitemap so it contains only live new URLs
— Remove any old-URL or staging sitemaps
— Resubmit the fresh sitemap in Search Console
Next step: open your sitemap.xml, confirm every URL returns 200, then resubmit it in GSC.
Migration Helpdesk
@MigrationHelpdesk
Q: We migrated but our sitemap still lists the old URLs. Is that causing the crawl errors?
Этот пост опубликован в Telegram-канале Migration Helpdesk. Подписаться можно по ссылке: @MigrationHelpdesk.