How Do I Fix Sitemap Error 404? • Explore Keywords

Question

I have a question about sitemaps. We have switched from static sitemaps to programmatic ones. The old (static) sitemaps were removed from GSC, robots.txt and the sitemap links return 404. The new sitemaps were submitted everywhere and fetched properly. Yet Google keeps on crawling the old sitemaps and the number of errors in GSC keeps growing. How can I make google drop the old (removed) sitemaps and crawl the new ones?
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Poonam · Accepted Answer

301 redirect old sitemap link to new sitemaps

Fajal Shah · Answer

410 status that sitemap. The 410 status tells Google to immediately deindex. It's a good trick for when stuff gets stuck in their cache and or you want things gone right away.