One SEO professional was concerned about their CMS platform. This platform was automatically generating a sitemap file with a different file name than before. They 301 redirected the old sitemap to the new one.
They are keeping the 301 redirect currently.
Their main question is: will the 301 redirect cause any issues with crawling or indexing?
John explained that no, the redirect is fine. He believes it’s a good practice to have.
What he would do as well is make sure that the new URL of the sitemap file is directly submitted in Search Console, or at least in the robots.txt file so they can go directly to that sitemap file.
This way, Google doesn’t have to go through the redirect first.
John doesn’t think that this changes anything significantly. It just makes it a bit cleaner in that they can go directly to a sitemap file and get all of these URLs.
It’s not going to change the site’s ranking. But it does make it easier and cleaner for Google to get to the sitemap file.
This happens at approximately the 32:23 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
Our CMS platform is now automatically generating the sitemap file with a different file name than before. We 301 redirected the old sitemap to the new one, will keeping the 301 redirect currently cause any issues with crawling or indexing?
John (Answer) 32:40
The redirect is fine. I think that’s a good practice to have, what I would also do is just make sure that the new URL of the sitemap file is directly submitted in Search Console, or at least in the robots. txt file so that we can go directly to the sitemap file, and that we don’t have to go through the redirect. I don’t think that changes anything significantly, it just makes it a little bit cleaner in that we can go directly to a sitemap file and get all of those URLs. It’s not going to change your site’s ranking. It just makes it a little bit easier, a little bit cleaner.
