Hello
Thank you for contacting Rank Math again.
Could you mind sharing your Homepage URL for further checking on your issue here?
Here are some recommendations to check:
Check if you have set the homepage to noindex.
Check if you have blocked this page from being crawled using your robots file.
We are looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
https://www.knowaboutweb.com is my homepage. First I have checked that I have set homepage to index and customized 404 page to index.
After this error I changed my custom 404 page to no index.
I checked twice homepage is set to index only.
I dont know how to check this page is set to crawled.
Please help me to index my homepage
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up.
The video you have shared in the sensitive data section seems to be private. Please set it to Public so we can also check on our end.
However, I’ve checked your homepage and it was already set to index as well in the page’s source code. You can also use this tool to check:
https://smallseotools.com/meta-tags-analyzer/
Your robots.txt also declares multiple sitemap files. You can delete the 2 sitemaps above so there won’t be any confusion to search engines.
Here’s a link on how to edit your robots.txt using Rank Math:
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-edit-robots-txt-with-rank-math/
I hope that helps.
Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you need further assistance with anything else.
Hi,
I have opened my robot.txt to edit in rank math plugin. But the robot.txt code does not contain sitemap.ml or news_sitemap.xml.
I have made the video which I shared to public. So can you please check that also.
This is the recording of that page.
https://www.loom.com/share/b1ca0238e4b54dd4ad2cea7f4d55e708
Help me with this and thank you for your great support
Hello,
Could you please check if you have a physical copy of the robots.txt file present inside your root installation of your WordPress?
If the file is present, Delete it (If not, proceed to the next step).
Those two sitemaps are coming from the Jet Pack plugin. Please disable the sitemap from jetpack settings.
Now, we need to flush the sitemap cache:
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 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/
That should fix the issue. Please let me know if that does not. We are here to assist.
Looking forward to your update. Thank You.
Hi,
I have disabled the sitemap in jetpack.
I have also flushed the cache as per the steps.
Even after that, Google is not indexing my homepage.
Whether there is any other problem or possibilities to index my homepage.
Except my homepage all the other pages and posts are indexed in Google.
So please help me and thanks for your great support
Here is the video recorded:
https://www.loom.com/share/e86a4e1293134ac29ce56960491a3eb6
Hello,
Thank you for your reply,
Soft 404 is not an actual 404. It means the page looks and behaves like a 404 even though it is not reporting as a 404 page. The common reason for this is that the page has little or no Content which is usually the same for a 404 page. You need to add some more content to the homepage page then rerun the rest. That will solve your problem.
You can learn more about soft 404 error on Google’s official page:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/soft-404-errors?hl=en
I hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Hi,
Actually I have made a mistake in Rank Math image settings which I have made and clearly explained in this video. Also say whether I need to index the customized 404 page or not. All my errors are images only so help me with this.
Link is here https://www.loom.com/share/33ccb5a03b8346188c9da53c098526b9
Hello,
Thank you for your reply.
If you feel like you have made changes to Rank Math settings that lead to soft 404 errors, Please kindly revert the changes and inform google about it (If you haven’t already), and do also let us know if that fixed it.
For the 404 custom page, No, that page should not be indexed at all. Otherwise, it will show on the Google SERPs and lead bad experience for users.
You can learn more about here:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/custom-404-pages
I hope that helps. Thank you.
How to Disable Attachment Pages in WordPress. All my 404 page not found is attachment page URL. I have redirected 404 errors to original 404 default page itself.
Now i have changed the custom 404 page as a normal page and included in the menu. Even after that, that page is not indexing. I will clearly show you the process here.
https://www.loom.com/share/36ae545b36024b3c8bb6deee58d5ec98
Can I reinstall rank math to start adjusting settings again?
Hello,
Thank you for the update, and apologies for the delay.
I’ve checked the video you shared, and it seems that the Redirect Attachments option is already enabled, but it doesn’t show there that you have clicked the save changes button below.
If you have already done that and your attachment pages are still not redirecting, we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
We really look forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up, and apologies for the delay.
I have already replicated the issue on your site and passed this to our development team for further investigation. We will get back to you shortly.
Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime to assist you further with anything else.
We really appreciate your kind patience regarding this matter.
Thank you.
Thank you for your continuous support. So please help me with this in a quick time because my website traffic started growing now only. Sorry for the trouble.
Hello,
Thanks for getting back to us.
The attachment that doesn’t get redirected to the homepage are actual 404 pages and don’t exist on your server. Even with Rank Math disabled that attachment page is throwing that error.
That could be caused by some corrupt entries on your database tables and it’s not related to Rank Math since the error still occurs when the plugin is disabled.
Hope this helps clarify the situation.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
