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Referring sitemap in GSC shows old urls

Referring sitemap in GSC shows old urls
Home » SEO & Analytics » Referring sitemap in GSC shows old urls

Why is the referring sitemap in GSC shows old urls?

Have you ever come across this issue?

You submit a page to GSC (Google Search Console) and next to Referring sitemap it shows versions of your url that you are now using.

Maybe it is showing:
http://yoururl.com or https://www.yoururl.com when you only using https://yoururl.com

There are a number of reasons for this.  The obvious one is to check to see if you have by mistake created a link using the full url you dont want. I love using Better Search Replace to quickly search the site but be careful – not for the rookies.

If Google Search Console is finding referring pages with https://www. while your site is set up as https://, it could be due to one or more of the following issues:

1. Incorrect Redirects or Misconfigured Canonicals

  • Check if https://www. versions of your pages are accessible. They should redirect to the non-www version with a 301 redirect.

  • In WordPress, go to Settings > General and ensure both the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) are set to https://yourdomain.com (without www).

  • Inspect canonical tags in your page source (<link rel="canonical" href="https://yourdomain.com">) to ensure they point to the correct version.

2. External Links Pointing to https://www.

  • Other websites or backlinks might be linking to your https://www. version.

  • Use Google Search Console’s Links report or a tool like SEMrush/Ahrefs to find and update those links.

3. Sitemap & Internal Links

  • Check if your XML sitemap (via Rank Math or another plugin) includes https://www. links instead of https://.

  • Inspect internal links in your website code—any that reference https://www. should be updated to match your canonical version.

4. Cloudflare or Hosting Settings

  • If you use Cloudflare, check its page rules and SSL/TLS settings:

    • Redirect all https://www. traffic to https:// via a 301 redirect in Cloudflare Page Rules.

    • Ensure “Always Use HTTPS” is enabled.

5. Old Google Search Console Property

  • If you previously verified https://www.yourdomain.com, GSC may still show old data. Make sure you’ve verified the correct https://yourdomain.com property.

Fixing the Issue

  1. Set up a 301 Redirect (via .htaccess if using Apache)

    apache
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.yourdomain\.com [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

  2. Check & Update WordPress URL settings

  3. Re-submit the correct sitemap in Google Search Console.

  4. Check backlinks & update where possible.

  5. Flush Cloudflare cache to apply changes.

Let me know how it goes!