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The whole content of the website is running on HTTPS and WWW, while Google Search Console is reporting discovering URLs in the sitemap.xml only without https and www. However, there are no pages listed in the siteap that don't have HTTPS and WWW.

Sitemap.xml file is including about 50 sub-sitemap files of 40.000 links each and they're being accepted by Google Console if entered manually.

Why is Google not picking up on the redirection of sitemap files? Is there somewhere in search console that this is being configured?

HTTPS and WWW Sitemap index showing 0 discovered URLS:

HTTPS and WWW sitemaps work when submitted individually:

HTTP and no-WWW sitemap index shows full discovered URL count:

Only the sitemap index is submitted under HTTP and no-WWW:

Stephen Ostermiller
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igi
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  • Redirect configuration depends on your web server and/or hosting setup – Maximillian Laumeister May 13 '20 at 22:11
  • The server is running on Nginx and I guess it might be related to the difference in amount of keys - certificate provider is providing 3 keys (1 - key, 2 - certificate, 3- certificate of authenticating center) while Nginx is using only 2 for configuration. SSL works fine in general, so no answer for the moment. – igi May 14 '20 at 12:43
  • You had tagged this "SEO" but XML sitemaps have almost no bearing on SEO. At best, they can get Googlebot to crawl the URLs listed in them and choose those URLs at the canonical. However, unless your site has links to each of those pages, Google will usually choose not to index them. Even if they do get indexed, they won't be able to rank well. For SEO, sitemaps are a bit of a red herring. It is far better to link your pages than to use XML sitemaps. See The Sitemap Paradox – Stephen Ostermiller May 15 '20 at 13:38
  • How long ago did you redirect your site to HTTPS? When you submit a sitemap index it takes Google several months to display a discovered URL count other than zero. My guess is that you just haven't waited several months. See: Google says my sitemap index was “processed successfully”, yet “total discovered URLs” is 0 – Stephen Ostermiller May 15 '20 at 13:44
  • The HTTPS is enable since long ago, about 2-3 years at least and the coverage was growing rapidly, reaching about 700K indexed pages.

    About 4-5 month we were cleaning w3 validator errors and then something happened to the the Sitemap.xml - it became unreadable by Google. For the moment the coverage is at 350K valid pages.

    By mistake a canonical was used in the href code, although there are no double pages. Several days ago HREFLANG and the ALTERNATE language was relocated to the sub-sitemaps, to see it works this way. So far, by downloading sitemap in Screaming Frog I see that it doen't

     – igi May 15 '20 at 19:12
  • It seems that all sitemap files have a canonical somewhere and Google thinks they're all the same. I also see via Google Console that there are lot's of impressions directly of the sub-sitemap files, so it sends search requests to the sitemap where the link is, instead of to the actual page.

    Today the generation of sitemap files is being set to the PhP instead of Nginx, to get more debugging info and to tune the http headers.

     – igi May 15 '20 at 19:20
  • I know that sitemaps are not doing any magic, but to be objective I can tell that working sitemaps generating higher traffic than non working - difference can be x10 or x50 times higher with, although eventually in totals it might not be much.

    Thanks for your feedback, I will check your links.

     – igi May 15 '20 at 19:20
  • Another issue that I did not mention - out of 1M pages, GCS sees only 1 mobile page (root page) and 1 HREFLANG page (also root).

    Mobile pages were all adjusted according to Google Lighthouse and there are no errors, but apparently Google doesn't see them. HREFLANG was and still is defined, but also no luck with Google. Both are missing for about 4-5 months, not able to spot where does it go wrong if it's set according to the book.

     – igi May 15 '20 at 19:52

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