Can sitemap index reference sitemaps on different url?

tux_tina

This may seem duplicate of this one . However, you may find the answers confusing, as no definite answers were given, and they may be outdated by now. That's why asking it Say on the robots.txt of my website https://example.com , I reference the sitemap index as Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemaps.xml Now, if the stemaps.xml index references a sitemap on another host, like https://host2.example.com/sitemaps.xml , will it work? From the...

Originally asked by S.Nakib on Stack Exchange (webmasters) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Yes, a sitemap index can reference multiple sitemaps, but generally they should belong to the same website domain. Search engines expect the sitemap index and the sitemaps inside it to be under the same site or host. Referencing sitemaps from completely different domains usually isn’t recommended and may not be processed correctly. However, using different URLs within the same domain (for example different folders or subpaths) is completely fine. The main goal is to keep the sitemap structure clear so search engines can easily crawl and index your pages.

Full answer by Sadaf Ali: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/148565 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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