Keep sitemap URLs on the correct domain

Google ignores sitemap entries from domains it cannot verify as yours — cross-domain URLs are simply skipped, meaning those pages lose the crawl-discovery benefit of the sitemap.

Quick Reference

• Every <loc> URL must use the same domain and protocol (https://www.example.com) as the sitemap file itself
• Cross-domain URLs in a sitemap are ignored by Google
• Mixing http:// and https:// URLs in one sitemap creates conflicting signals
• Mixing www and non-www variants indicates a canonicalization issue to fix first

Check

Parse all <loc> values in the sitemap and extract the protocol and hostname. Flag any URL whose protocol or hostname differs from the sitemap's own URL. Common mismatches: http vs https, www vs non-www, old domain vs new domain.

Fix

Update all <loc> URLs to use the canonical-url protocol and hostname. If the site is on https://www.example.com, every sitemap URL must start with https://www.example.com/. Regenerate and resubmit the sitemap.