: After changing domain name, should I create an XML sitemap with the old URLs? I've moved old domain to new domain. My site contains many pages (~30M indexed pages). I want to make sure all

@BetL925

You should NOT put your old redirecting URLs into your sitemap. Your sitemap should have only your preferred URLs in it. All the URLs in your sitemap should be clean. There shouldn't be any redirects, errors, or poor quality pages. Your sitemap should consist of your best pages at their preferred URLs.

Bing has said:


We have a quality threshold on our sitemaps. When you build a site map for us, we want it to be clean. When you put a URL into our site map, what I don't want to see in there is any URL that's a 404, 302, 301, anything at all. I want the end state URL only.


Google now puts warnings into Google Search Console if it detects redirects in your sitemap:



Reference: Google Sitemaps Ask For Clean URLs

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@Sarah324

I'm worried that if I submit a new sitemap for my newdomain, it will
get crawled without getting the link juice from the olddomain


Site position goes down, because Google may index your new site content and does not remove the old one in a same time, it take some time to understand that 301 redirection is done to this new URL, so we should transfer link juicy to this new URL, so in beginning all webmaster always suffer from lower position, but it will back soon once Google understand your both URL properly. Google also have change of address tool, which can speed up the process very quickly, because 301 redirection is done on page level, while this tool is dedicated at domain level.


Should I keep a sitemap with the olddomain links?


Sitemap have nothing to do with ranking/linkjuicy. 1) you can redirect your old sitemap location to new sitemap location. 2) you can keep the old sitemap as it is, and Google will follow 301 redirection automatically 3) you can also add the newdomin link to your older sitemap. I have not done any case study to find which is clear winner, but with proper 301 redirection, Googlebot will surely remove the old one and index the new one automatically.

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@Michele947

My client has changed a domain old to new for re-branding purpose (2015) and we redirected (301) all the pages of old domain to new domain site. After few months we see that all of old domain pages backlinks are working for new domain. Off page SEO will work for your new domain.

So as far my little SEO experience I thank that you can redirect (301) to keep all previous backlink/link juice.

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