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I encountered this problem with search console. It is showing Indexed but not submitted in sitemap when the URL is actually present in the website. What is going on?

Xplore Dubai
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    I'd double check that the submitted sitemap does contain the exact URL that Google is reporting on. – Tony McCreath Feb 24 '20 at 02:29
  • There is a growing number of webmasters complaining about a bug with this kind of symptoms as long as a big drop in traffic and ranks. You're welcome to read this article about it: https://www.seotool.ee/indexed-not-submitted-in-sitemap As well as this one : https://www.pietrobiase.it/december-2019-google-de-indexed-pages-in-serp-bug-or-algorithmic-penalty/ – Chuck Mar 09 '20 at 22:08

1 Answers1

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It can be that Google "found" the URL in a different way other than looking at the sitemap (following a link, for example). Google uses many different strategies to find and crawl content, the important thing is that the URL was found but you should still check that the exact URL submitted is the correct one (to make sure there are no canonical issues).

Andre Guelmann
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  • It's not necessarily the case that there's nothing to worry about. It's highly possible that Google actually found a similar but slightly different URL (http instead of https, missing a trailing slash, slightly different GET variables, etc). This might or might not be a serious SEO issue, depending on the cause and the importance of the page. I should recommend checking very carefully that the URLs are actually identical and ensure that the sitemap / file structure and redirects / canonical link policy are correctly set up. – GeoffAtkins Feb 24 '20 at 07:31
  • Yes, good point, I edited my answer – Andre Guelmann Feb 24 '20 at 07:40