Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?

[Jonathan.Smith]

I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?

[LoganRay]

Hi,

Your XML sitemap should only contain 'clean URLs'. By that I mean only 200 status URLs.

You should not have any redirects or error pages. You should also make sure you've got the preferred format; i.e. www vs. non-www and https vs. http.

[Gyorgy.B]

I agree with Logan.

If the ratio of redirected or broken URLs is too high in your sitemap XML, there is a chance that Google won't crawl it as frequently as it should because the search robot doesn't want to waste resources on these URLs.

The only time when redirected URLs are useful in the sitemap XML is when you're migrating the domain or make IA changes and you want to make sure that the search engine discovers the 301 redirections as quickly as possible.