Duplicate URL's in Sitemap? Is that a problem?

[Luciana_BAH]

I submitted a sitemap to on Search Console - but noticed that there are duplicate URLs, is that a problem for Google?

[LoganRay]

Hi,

This isn't necessarily a problem, but XML sitemaps should be as clean as possible before they're uploaded. i.e., no 301'd URLs, no 404s, no dupes, no parameter'd URLs, no canonicalized, etc..

Are they duplicates in the sense that one has caps, and the other doesn't? As in /example.html and /Example.html. If so, you'll want to fix that.

If they're identically formatted URLs, there should be no problem, but you're at duplicate content risk if they're different in anyway and not canonicalized.

[Matthew_Edgar]

Generally speaking, this isn't the worst problem you can have with your XML sitemap. In an ideal world, you'll be able to remove duplicate URLs from the sitemap and only submit a single URL for each page. In reality, most larger sites I've encountered have some amount of duplicate content in their XML sitemap with no real major problems.

Duplicate content is really only a major problem if it is "deceptive" in nature. So long as this is just a normal consequence of your CMS, or similar, vs. an attempt to game the rankings you are probably fine. For more about that check out this support article.

The other problem you may encounter is with your search results for those duplicate pages. That article makes mention that Google will pick the URL they think is best (more about that here as well) and the URL they deem the best will be the URL that surfaces in the search results. That may or may not be the same URL you or your visitors would deem best. So, what you might find is Google picked a not great URL (like one with extra parameters) and with the not great URL appearing in the SERPs, your search result isn't as compelling to click on as some other version of the URL may be.

[Luciana_BAH]

Thank you everyone!

Basically for some reason the system I used to generate the sitemap just has some (not a whole lot) of duplicate URLs, they are exact duplicates. I figured Google would just overlook that.

This was helpful!

Thanks again,

Luciana

[MattRoney]

Hi Luciana! If Logan and/or Matthew answered your question, mind marking one or both of their responses as a "Good Answer" (down in the lower-right of the responses)? It helps us keep track of things, and it gives them a few extra MozPoints.