In this episode of AskGooglebot, John Mueller reviews what a sitemap is and how to remove it in Search Console. Watch the video now for more information about this topic!
Video Transcript
JOHN MUELLER: Today’s question comes from @Bos_Guy, and it is, “How does one turn off or delete a site map in the new Search Console?” Well, this one’s pretty easy, but only once you’ve seen it. In order to remove a sitemap in the new Search Console, you go to the Sitemaps menu. Then you click on the Sitemaps file there, and now click on the dot dot dot menu in the top left and select “Remove sitemap.” By doing this, Google will stop tracking the sitemap file in Search Console. Alternatively, you could just remove the sitemap file from your website so that it returns either a 404 or a 410 HTTP result code, which basically just means that the file isn’t available. Over time, Google systems will stop trying to use that particular sitemap file. Note– removing a sitemap file doesn’t prevent crawling of the URLs that were specified in the sitemap file. A sitemap file helps us to crawl more efficiently, though, which is generally why we recommend using it. In particular, a sitemap file helps us to find new and updated pages slightly faster, which is always a good thing, right?
For more information about sitemaps, check out the link in the description below.
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