Search Index Purge Plugin and sitemaps

Hi Heather!

Installing the Search Index Purge Plugin will do the following:

– Every attachment URL will return a 410 status code.
– A static XML sitemap, containing all the attachment URLs on a given site will be created. The post modified date for each of those URLs is the activation date and time of the plugin.

The XML sitemap with the recent post modified date will make sure that Google spiders all those URLs again. The 410 status code will make sure Google takes them out of its search results in the fastest way possible. After six months the attachment URLs should be gone from the search results.

As for your HTTP and HTTP sitemaps, a correct SSL migration should result in a redirect for each existing HTTP link of your website to its HTTPS equivalent. So there shouldn’t be an HTTP sitemap anymore. These redirects should be done at the server level and the Yoast SEO plugin is unable to create such type of redirects. You need to get in touch with your web host for assistance.

For more information on HTTP to HTTPS migrations, we recommend the following guides:
https://yoast.com/dev-blog/move-website-https-ssl/
https://kinsta.com/blog/http-to-https/

Thank you for information. I haven’t had any issues with redirects since having an SSL. I was also told to keep my sitemap for the http, so I’m a little confused now. I was just wondering if the search engine purge plugin is going to purge both sitemaps listed in google search console? It is not stated in any documentation that I read. I will contact my host and see what they say as well.
Thanks again,
Heather

If you have recently migrated from HTTP to HTTPS and if you have the proper redirects set that redirects all the URLs from HTTP to HTTPS automatically, search engines will automatically drop the HTTP URLs and all the URLs will eventually become HTTPS.

Please note that it’s not part of the Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin.

Thanks for that information. However, nobody is answering my question. I would simply like a yes or no. Is the purge plugin going to purge both sitemaps? Yes or No? Also, as I’m looking at my google search console sitemaps, both sitemaps are showing the same changes to the number of urls and both of them have created the second attachment sitemap, so I’m going to assume that the answer is yes to my question. The purge plugin looks to be purging both sitemaps. I am also in contact with my host about having both sitemaps, so I’ll see what they suggest doing.
Thanks again for your help.
Heather

Is the purge plugin going to purge both sitemaps? Yes or No?
Yes and No. A single website can have only one sitemap. So, there are no multiple sitemaps that Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin can update.

That said, Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin will generate the media (attachment) sitemaps under the sitemap index and will return 410 HTTP status code for all the available media (attachment) pages to make sure that search engines drop them from search results.

Note: if you have the same sitemap available in both HTTP and HTTPS, you shall have a redirect from HTTP to HTTPS to avoid duplication.

We hope this clarifies your query better now!

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.