Sitemap with homepage URL repeated several times - it is a problem?

[McTaggart]

Hello Mozzers,

I am looking at a website with the homepage repeated several times (4 times) on the sitemap (sitemap is autogenerated via a plugin) - is this an SEO problem do you think - might it damage SEO performance, or can I ignore this issue?

I am thinking I can ignore, yet it's an odd "issue" so your advice would be welcome!

Thanks, Luke

[GlobeRunner]

Generally speaking, this is normal, and you shouldn't have to worry about it. There's a Google Webmaster thread that pointed to this issue specifically, and Google gave an official response (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sitemaps-duplicate-16128.html)

"This is apparently normal if you submit Sitemap files with the same URLs listed multiple times. Since submitting the same URLs multiple times doesn't change anything with regards to your site's crawling & indexing, I'd just submit it once if you want the correct counts (alternately, if the count doesn't bother you, you can also just leave it like this."

[McTaggart]

Many thanks Eric - much appreciated - that clarifies everything perfectly