Spammy links in sitemap

Hello,

I apologize for the issue you are facing with spammy links in your sitemap. To address this, we recommend checking a few things:

1. Validate Your Sitemap: Use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to ensure your sitemap is correctly configured.

2. Check for Noindex Settings: Ensure that your posts are set to index. You can do this by going to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and making sure the Index checkbox is enabled in the Robots Meta settings.
   

3. Review Custom Canonicals: If you have set custom canonical URLs for your posts, they may not appear in the sitemap. Consider removing them to allow Rank Math to generate the canonical URLs.

4. Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, flushing permalinks can resolve issues with sitemaps. Go to the Permalinks settings in your WordPress dashboard and click Save Changes without making any changes.

5. Check for Plugin Conflicts: Use the Health Check plugin to identify if any other plugins are causing conflicts with Rank Math.

If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket with any additional details or specific errors you are encountering, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further.

Thank you for raising this concern!

Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math

Hello,

Thanks for contacting Rank Math support. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you.

Please follow the steps below to see if that works for you.

#1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp

#2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin from caching. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/

#3. If the above steps don’t seem to work, kindly apply the following filter code to your site.

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

Once done, please clear your website cache including server-side cache, and check the sitemap again.

Let us know how it goes. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.