Featured Images of WooCommerce products not included in Rank Math sitemap

#1098804
  • Ichim Dorel

    2 weeks, 2 days ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    I’ve noticed an issue with the sitemap generated by Rank Math on my website https://carolbeer.ro/
    .

    Although all WooCommerce products have a Featured Image set, these images are not included in the product-sitemap.xml.
    Only the images from the product gallery are showing up in the sitemap, but not the Featured Image.

    Here’s what I’ve already checked:

    The option “Include Featured Images” is enabled in Rank Math → Sitemap Settings.

    I cleared all caches (plugin and CDN) and re-saved both the Rank Math settings and permalinks.

    I tested with and without product galleries:

    Products that only have a Featured Image appear with 0 images in the sitemap.

    Products with galleries show images, but only from the gallery.

    I also tried adding a custom snippet to force the Featured Image into the sitemap, but it didn’t work — which makes me think this could be a bug in how Rank Math generates the WooCommerce product sitemap.

    Could you please check this and confirm if it’s a known issue? Is there an official fix or recommended approach?

    Thank you,
    Ichim Dorel

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • RankBot

    2 weeks, 2 days ago

    Hello,

    We apologize for the issue you are facing with the Featured Images not being included in your Rank Math sitemap for WooCommerce products. Thank you for providing detailed information about the steps you’ve already taken to troubleshoot this issue.

    Based on your description, it seems that you have already enabled the option to include Featured Images in the sitemap settings, which is a crucial step. However, if the images are still not appearing, it could be due to a few reasons:

    1. Plugin Conflicts: Sometimes, other plugins can interfere with how Rank Math generates the sitemap. You might want to check for any plugin conflicts using the Health Check plugin.

    2. Caching Issues: Although you’ve cleared caches, ensure that there are no server-side caching mechanisms that might be affecting the sitemap generation.

    3. Theme Compatibility: Occasionally, themes can also affect how plugins function. Switching to a default theme temporarily can help identify if this is the case.

    4. Custom Snippets: If you added custom snippets, ensure they are correctly implemented and not conflicting with Rank Math’s default behavior.

    If none of these solutions resolve the issue, it may indeed be a bug or a specific case that requires further investigation by our development team. We recommend replying to your ticket so that a human agent from the Rank Math Support team can take over and provide more tailored assistance.

    In the meantime, you can also consider checking out our documentation on fixing sitemap issues for additional troubleshooting steps.

    Thank you for your patience, and we hope to resolve this issue for you soon!

    Sources:
    Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math

    This is an automated reply from Rank Math Support Bot. Your ticket has been assigned to a human agent and we will get back to you shortly.

    Ichim Dorel

    2 weeks, 2 days ago

    Rank Math free

    Thank you for your reply. I would like to clarify that I do not have the issues you mentioned (plugin conflicts, caching problems, theme incompatibility, or incorrect snippets).

    The problem persists: Featured Images are not included in the product sitemap, even though the option to include them is enabled and all products have a Featured Image set. Only gallery images are showing in the sitemap.

    Rakibuzzaman Siam

    1 week, 6 days ago

    Hello,

    We checked your product pages, and we can see the featured image is actually added as a CSS background image to the <div> tag instead of actual images inside the default <img> tag.

    Because of this, Rank Math is unable to detect the presence of images on the page (since they are actually not there, just as background images).

    For Rank Math to recognize the images, they should be added using the <img> tag. Google and other search engines also do not parse background images. Please refer to the following guidelines by Google: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/google-images#help-us-discover-all-your-images

    Hope that helps, and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
     
    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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