According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google Webmaster Tools has supposedly developed a glitch, due to which Webmasters aren't able to delete Sitemaps from their user profiles.
There are several threads at Google Groups that suggest that no matter how many times Webmasters delete the Sitemaps, they keep on reappearing.
“I've tried to delete the RSS feed "sitemap" from webmaster tools, but it doesn't seem to go – te page reloads – but both sitemaps are still showing?â€
To this, Googler Susan Moskawa, responded:
“Hi folks,
Thanks for reporting this issue. Our team is looking into it.
FYI no need to worry, since those extra Sitemaps shouldn't cause you
any problems.â€
According to a user at Webmaster World, Google has merged two of his Sitemaps files into the same domain. The user had created profiles for sub-folders to use and manage them separately. However, it seems that Google has automatically merged those two sitemaps under a single site.
“I have two sitemaps for my main website, one for the static content with the sitemap being in the root, the other for the forum, located in the forum directory.
Previously, I had to submit and list them separately in werbmastertools, in the following way…
www.example.com: Sitemaps 1
www.example.com/forum/: Sitemaps 1
A few days ago, I noticed the forum sitemap had been listed along with the one in the root and now it looks like this…
www.example.com: Sitemaps 2
www.example.com/forum/: Sitemaps 1
Does this mean it's now safe to remove the /forum/ listingor should I leave it in place? “
One of the posts that replied to the above query, had this to say:
“Yes, it looks like you could make the change. You would also want to generate all the urls to the one sitemap at the root, and not just change the setting Webmaster Tools. i just noticed some new reports in Google Groups that people are now having problems deleting a sitemap. I'd say don't change anything until this gets sorted out. “
Well, considering the history of Google, I wouldn't be so much concerned, as Google tends to take these glitches very seriously and will definitely fix them as soon as possible.
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Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I deleted my sitemap.
It is working easily, it is having no problem.
Why Sitemaps Cannot be Deleted?
I deleted my old sitemaps from Google and my web site but their crawlers still trying to access them. I also denied access to that folder via robots.txt but it did not help. Its so confusing:)