Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for the delay and for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
Could you please confirm if you’re using the PRO version of Rank Math? If so, you can disable the locations.kml in your sitemap. Please follow the steps in this link:
https://rankmath.com/kb/disable-local-sitemap/#3-local-sitemap-in-rank-math
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
This is not a good solution.
There’s an inconsistency between including locations.kml in local-sitemap.xml and sending the x-robots-tag: noindex header for it.
Please change the plugin so that there’s no conflict. When something is included in a sitemap, Google should be able to index it.
Hello,
Thanks for getting back to us.
Even if that has the noindex tag Google will still crawl the contents of the file and correctly show them. The tag is just so the sitemap itself doesn’t appear in SERPs which we don’t want.
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/62978/prevent-xml-sitemaps-from-showing-up-in-google-search-results
This is the intended behavior to let Google crawl that file without having it being shown in the SERPs.
So, you can safely ignore this warning from Google Search Console.
Also, like my colleague mentioned, there’s also the possibility of not showing this file at all, if you are using the PRO version of Rank Math.
Hope this clarifies any doubts you had.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hi Miguel,
Why not show the file in search results? It can be very useful for some applications.
Since this is typically a very short file, with very little text, and that text doesn’t typically match any keywords other than the brand name, it’s unlikely to appear in a way that lowers clickthrough rates of any other pages.
Please revert this and allow Google to index the map. If not, at least let site admins decide if that’s what they want.
BTW, generally speaking, notices from Google shouldn’t be ignored and it’s very difficult for people to ignore them. Emotionally, we all prefer a clean slate.
Thank you,
Gal
Hello,
Thank you for getting back to us,
We will forward your request here to our developers’ team to see if this issue can be resolved by including the feature to allow the indexing of this file. Further recommendations/advice shall be provided if this is not possible at the moment.
We are looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hello,
KML files should not be indexable. Sitemap files will still get crawled and seen by search bots but they should not be indexable (as in, get included in the SERPs).
We are unable to make this change to the plugin – unfortunately.
Hi Uzair,
KML files should not be indexable.
I don’t think this is a choice you can make for your users. Google documentation lists several applications that can use these files, and some site owners may want users of these applications to find their location files.
Regards,
Gal
Hello,
We understand but the noindex is added as per Google’s guidelines.
Please check this link: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-sitemap-files-index-27027.html
Especially: John explained that XML sitemaps do not need to be indexed to work. Noindexing a Sitemap file is irrelevant because they are not really web pages.
If you have any official statements saying the KML files should be indexable, please feel free to share the links/documents.
Thank you.
Hi Uzair,
Strictly speaking, locations.kml is not an XML sitemap, and the discussion doesn’t mention KML files explicitly.
I’m simply going by the fact that Google is flagging this file as evidence that it expects it to be indexed. If you don’t think that’s correct, why not ask @JohnMu? This should also get you some nice exposure.
Cheers,
Gal
Hello,
We have shared your feedback with the relevant persons.
Thank you.
I too am seeing the KML files listed in Google Search Console as error pages and when you drill down, it claims the error for these files is because they are marked as noindex.
I personally could care less either way, but since I have paid for the premium “Pro” version of your plugin, the last thing I want to see is 3 error pages showing up when I look at my site in the search console.
What can be done to quickly resolve this issue and ensure Google is not flagging these pages as ones with errors?
Thank you!
Hello everyone,
I’m getting “marked noindex” error on the KML File too and am wondering if there is a solution.
Thanks a lot
Hello,
Please do the following:
1. Add this code to your theme’s functions.php file:
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/http_headers', function( $headers ) {
if ( '/locations.kml' !== $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ) {
return $headers;
}
unset( $headers['X-Robots-Tag'] );
return $headers;
} );
2. Then, go to includes/modules/sitemap/abstract-xml.php and on line 60, replace this: $this->do_filter( 'sitemap/http_headers', $headers, $is_xsl );
With this:
$headers = $this->do_filter( 'sitemap/http_headers', $headers, $is_xsl );
Then, the KML files will stop being noindex although that is not something we would recommend.
Step 2 is needed because of a bug in the plugin right now. We will fix this in an upcoming update and then the filter in step 1 will work without any further action from your end.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
The filter is great. Thank you.
However, changing plugin code is not a good idea. The is not an important enough issue and it’s better to wait for the next plugin release.
Also, both lines of code provided are identical…
