Google: You can restrict access to XML Sitemaps to search engines

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Google’s John Mueller said it’s acceptable to restrict access to your XML Sitemaps to search engines only. This can technically prevent people from viewing your XML Sitemaps, but allow Google to access them.

This came about when Christoph Cemper asked about some sites that use Cloudflare to restrict access to their XML Sitemap files. Christoph asked “See a map of the xml site that” protects “it. Cloudflare. Wondering if Googlebot would enter this Captcha, or try again later, or just ignore the map. What experience / instructions @JohnMu in such a case?”

John responded further Twitter “That’s fine. These sitemaps are for search engines, and some sites prefer to restrict their access accordingly.”

Here are these tweets:

This obviously wouldn’t be a form of hiding, because people don’t have to see your Sitemap files, because XML Sitemap files are designed for search engines, not people. But this obviously wouldn’t apply to HTML Sitemap files …

Forum discussion on Twitter.

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