Category Sitemap Missing

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Could you please share your category sitemap URL to check? You can add it in the sensitive data section

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

Meanwhile, please also exclude your sitemaps from being cached. Here’s a link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/

Looking forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Hello,

Thank you for that information.

I’ve checked some of your category pages, and they are set to noindex upon checking the page’s source code. Please see the attached screenshot in the sensitive data section.

If you have already set them to index upon editing, it is possible that there is a plugin/theme conflict on your site.

To determine that, please follow this troubleshooting guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/

Here is a video you can follow as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcIWRhcUP2c

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

If the issue persists, please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.

Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

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/

Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

We really look forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Hello,

Thank you for that information.

Those pages you have shared are indeed already set to index.

Could you please check if you have somehow managed to add a custom canonical upon editing the category pages? The main purpose of adding a custom canonical to your pages is to let Google know that it is a duplicate page, and not to be indexed.

If you set the canonical manually, your posts/pages will not be included in your sitemap. Here’s a link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/kb/url-not-in-sitemap/#num-2-youve-set-a-custom-canonical-url

If the issue still persists, we may need to take a closer look at your site. Please follow the steps above for us to log in to your site and investigate this issue further.

Looking forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Hello,

The category sitemap was missing because you had set Category Archive Robots Meta to Noindex in WP Dashboard > Rank Math > Titles & Meta > Categories. If you set the robots meta to Noindex in global settings then the sitemap will not be generated.

I have set your category robots meta to index in the global settings and now the sitemap is being generated. Please noindex the categories that you don’t want to include in the sitemap manually.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you need any further assistance.

Hello,

I am glad that we could address your issue.

If you have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

Thank you.