GSC says category sitemap is a 404

#145947
  • Resolved Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    Pages weren’t getting indexed so I went to GSC and tried manually submitting them. All but 2 of the blog categories submitted fine. But those two and all the posts in those two categories came back with an error from Google that said the pages had noindex in the metatag which is NOT TRUE.

    It was set to noindex until a week ago though.

    So I went back to the site, made a simple change to the sitemap settings and saved. Then I resaved the permalinks and submitted the sitemap again. Same error. The category sitemap is missing. But the date is last week. It didn’t appear to update.

    Here is one that won’t index. https://blog.californiaskincaresupply.com/blog/business/

    Someone in a Facebook Group said this: “Also, because your category sitemap isn’t working, it’s possible that you did fix the robots meta tag, but it can’t crawl those URLs to receive new robots instructions as they are still being blocked from them by the last robot rules, and they haven’t received a new working category sitemap to try again.”

    I’m checking with Flywheel to see if they are caching the sitemap. I did flush the cache on the server though.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)
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  • Anas

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience caused.

    Can you please follow these steps?
    1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
    https://i.rankmath.com/xXXhDt

    2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server.

    That should fix the issue. Please let us know if that does not. We are here to assist.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    Please read what I wrote. I did that already, up till the caching part. I don’t have a caching plugin. I cleared the cache on the server though.

    Reinelle

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for following up.

    I’ve further investigated your sitemap, and it seems that the category sitemap URL is redirecting to https://blog.californiaskincaresupply.com/blog/*-sitemap.xml, but the category page seems to be already set to index.

    Are you using any redirection plugin? If so, could you please try to temporarily disable that plugin and see if the issue persists?

    You can also follow the steps in this link and check if the sitemap is working with only Rank Math activated:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/

    Only the site admin would know and your users won’t be affected by this troubleshooting.

    I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    That does help! There was in fact a redirect. I removed it, reset the site map, saved the permalinks again, deleted my sitemap in GSC, and then reentered it. I get the same error. The category sitemap still has a January 24 date even though it’s Feb 4, and the post sitemap is Feb 4. How do I get a new current category sitemap?

    Thanks

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    I just deleted a category and added a new one to force a refresh in case that had anything to do with it. Went through the steps again but there is still an error and the old date. The sitemap is there though: https://blog.californiaskincaresupply.com/category-sitemap.xml

    Danial

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math, and sorry for any inconvenience caused.

    Upon accessing your category’s sitemap: https://blog.californiaskincaresupply.com/category-sitemap.xml it is still pointing me to https://blog.californiaskincaresupply.com/blog/*-sitemap.xml

    RM

    I see your sitemap is being cached.
    https://i.rankmath.com/ACo86V

    Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. 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/

    I hope this helps you with your issue.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    This is what Flywheel, the host, had to say:

    “While we can certainly provide cache exclusions for sitemaps, the caching that we have in place for those is pretty minimal (10 minutes) and is most likely not related to the symptoms that you’ve been having on the site. Caching a sitemap for 10 minutes is merely putting in a bit of a buffer for bots/crawlers that would be hitting the site in a “robotic” way and making a number of sequential uncacheable requests to something that is not going to change a lot in any given 10 minute window.”

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    Now this is very strange. I finally got the idea to submit the category sitemap DIRECTLY to the URL inspection tool. It found it but came back with this error:

    Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag

    So now it’s saying your category sitemap as a noindex tag. How’s that possible?

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    I turned off Rankmath and installed Yoast to generate a new sitemap. The category sitemap for Yoast is identical to Rankmath but I had no problem getting GSC to recognize that one. Therefore, I think the problem is with Rankmath. Can I turn it back on or will I get the same problem?

    Uzair

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    It is normal to have a noindex tag on the Sitemap itself. If you check your current non-Rank Math Sitemap, you will notice the same thing.

    We see that your category archive URL is still not indexed even though you have changed sitemaps.

    If you switch back to Rank Math, we would love to take another look at this.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    I switched it back yesterday. It appears to have had no effect and Google can still crawl the category sitemap just fine.

    Reinelle

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for following up.

    I’ve checked your category sitemap, and it seems that it’s already showing fine and the modified date is already updated as well. If Google Search Console still says that it is marked as noindex, that is completely normal for sitemaps.

    I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    It’s not the sitemap showing as noindex that I’m concerned about. It’s all the posts. I can’t get Google to see that there is noindex tag anymore. It says it’s getting it from the sitemap.

    Reinelle

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for following up.

    Could you also provide the URL(s) that Google still says noindexed? I’ve tried checking some of the URLs in your category sitemap, and it seems that they are already indexed. You can include them in the designated Sensitive Data section to further investigate.
    Sensitive Data Section

    It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section.

    Thank you, and we really look forward to helping you.

    Kathy Long

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    Never mind. It was on page 2. I see it now.
    Did you get the urls? I’m not seeing it here.

    RankBot

    4 years ago

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 17 total)
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The ticket ‘GSC says category sitemap is a 404’ is closed to new replies.