help: Sitemap file location

[toytonic]

📚 What are you trying to do?

This is more of a question but an actual issue right now. Hope you can help me clarify things a bit.

While playing around with the multiple sitemaps feature, I noticed that the path of every sitemap entry is generated with a loc similar to https:example.com/__sitemap__/[my-sitemap-entry].xml.

A coworker pointed out that the location or path of the sitemap should be considered when using multiple sitemaps. Under https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html you can read about it. Basically it says:

The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/.

So my question is: Isn't this contradicting with the default behavior that multiple sitemaps will always be generated with the __sitemap__ path?

🔍 What have you tried?

No response

ℹ️ Additional context

No response

[harlan-zw]

Hey, great question. I don't know in this instance, it's possible it does not adhere to the spec but it doesn't explicitly say about having alternative paths when using the root sitemap index file.

No search engine has an issue with it to the best of my knowledge.

The routes are setup like this due to how Nitro route matching works, we can't dynamically match routes such as /<sitemap>-sitemap.xml which means we need to use a middleware that has performance overhead and other drawbacks. This is how it was working in v5 for reference.

I'm open to rolling the change back if it's causing any issues though.

[toytonic]

Thanks for your quick reply. I also can't tell if search engines do have any issues with this. Will get back if I can find any further information on this.

[toytonic]

I found a similar quote in the google docs:

The location of a Sitemap file determines the set of URLs that can be included in that Sitemap. A Sitemap file located at http://example.com/catalog/sitemap.xml can include any URLs starting with http://example.com/catalog/ but can not include URLs starting with http://example.com/images/.

So, if you ask me I would rather go with safe than sorry. But I don't know both how to verify how google really treats sitemaps not following this rule and what consequence a rollback on your side would have.

[harlan-zw]

Add the sitemap to google search console and it should tell you if there's an issues

[resolutionathens]

Hey Harlan. Can we revisit this? I, too, would like to be able to control where my sitemaps live. I can create a post-build script to move them out of __sitemap__, but I would rather have a flag within the module config.

[harlan-zw]

I am considering rolling the initial change back and allowing people to put them wherever they find appropriate, give me a couple of days to decide.

[harlan-zw]

I'll avoid rolling back for now due to potential breaking changes for end users but you can easily change the multi-sitemap path using sitemapsPathPrefix and prefix your sitemaps however you like.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
   sitemap: {
      sitemapsPathPrefix: '/',
      sitemaps: {
         ['sitemap-foo']: {}
      }
   }
})

I've added this to the docs as well.