Weird sitemap (maybe different languages)?! how to clean up?

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

A Shopify store owner encountered persistent sitemap issues after removing Spanish and German translations from their ~1,000 product store. Despite deleting these language versions, indexing tools continue showing each page in three variants (main domain, en-ca, en-au subdirectories).

Key Problems:

  • Old German (de.) and Spanish (es.) page links now redirect to 404 error pages
  • Google Search Console and Bing Site Explorer display multiple URL variants for each page
  • Resubmitting sitemaps to GSC hasn’t resolved the duplicate indexing

Resolution:
The issue was marked as resolved by adjusting subdomain options within Shopify’s market settings, rather than manually editing the sitemap. This suggests the problem stemmed from market/language configuration rather than translation remnants.

Another user reported experiencing similar sitemap concerns on their site.

Summarized with AI on November 2. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi there,

I have a strange behavior/seeing for many months now.

I had the intention some time ago to have a multi-product store (~1000 items) in ENG, ESP and GER. I figured out that it would be better to have separate pages for each market language, so I deleted the ESP and GER translations again and continued with English only. The links then started with de. (German page) and es. (Spanish page).

Pages/apps that can help index pages on GSC and Bing always show each page in 3 different variants.
In this case:

…com/sitemap…

…com/en-ca/…

…com/en-au/…

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But whether this is really related to the previous language setting - I don’t know, it’s just a guess.

When I search Google for certain products on a previous German or Spanish page, it leads to my 404 not found page.

How do I get rid of all these “old” pages? I have already resubmitted the sitemap to the GSC several times, but nothing has helped. Do I have to change the sitemap myself?

Can someone assist?

Below few more screenshots.

Bing Site Explorer:

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random selected page from GSC:

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2

resolved.

Simply by the subdomain options under the different markets.

3

I was also looking for the exact same issue on my site… I was afraid particularly due to sitemap problem.