Sitemap considered as 404?

  • Resolved Cesar Pinto

    (@empresa365)


    4 years, 3 months ago

    Hey guys,

    First of all, thank you so much for the plugin.

    I’m using the All 404 Pages Redirect to Homepage plugin and it seems to be making the sitemap unavailable: when you browse …/sitemap.xml it redirects to the home page (I tried different browsers, incognito windows, resaving permalinks, clearing cache, etc… I wonder if cron and PRC requests are also being affected by this.)

    The sitemap exists and it can be found when browsing that URL with this 404 plugin disabled. Is there any way to avoid that? Maybe you guys recommend using another 404 plugin?

    TIA,
    Cesar

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi, just to be sure:

    I’m using the All 404 Pages Redirect to Homepage plugin and it seems to be making the sitemap unavailable

    …if you disable that plugin, is TSF sitemap working as expected?

    Second note, redirecting 404 to your homepage is not beneficial for SEO. It fact, it might even be harmful. Let’s say I was looking for an avocado recipe. You used to have one on your website. In time, you either moved it or deleted it without a proper redirect to a relevant resource.

    Sometime later I found a link to your recipe on Google (hooray!) or some article, and now that I click it… I end up on the homepage. This is a terrible experience for me as a user. I probably just leave straight away, increasing your bounce rate. On top of that, your Webmaster Console will not tell you about this problem, since you used 301 redirects to the homepage. Lastly, 404 are not a scary SEO problem, broken links are the nature of the Internet. Google knows it and redirecting all broken links to your homepage is a cheap trick that is not fooling anyone (forget about link juice). There is more, but I think this should be enough to illustrate the idea.

    Thread Starter Cesar Pinto

    (@empresa365)

    Hey Pierre, I appreciate the prompt response.

    Yes, disabling this 404 plugin makes the sitemap work as expected.

    I was not keen to install this 404 plugin either, but this ‘was’ a non-wp site with hundreds of posts that are currently being rewritten and slowly migrated to WordPress. A proper 404 page with navigation links and a search bar is currently in the making.

    Thanks!

    Hey Cesar, sorry for not following up right away. Your issue is out of my wheelhouse, my colleague has to follow up with you. Thank you for your patience.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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