Hello,
I apologize for the inconvenience you are facing with your sitemap. If you have recently changed the URLs for some pages and redirected the old URLs to new ones, but the old URLs are still visible in the sitemap, there could be a few reasons for this issue.
One common reason is that the sitemap might not have updated yet to reflect the changes you made to the URLs. In such cases, you can try flushing the sitemap cache to force an update.
To do this, you can follow these steps:
- Access your Rank Math plugin.
- Navigate to the Sitemap settings.
- Look for an option to flush or clear the sitemap cache.
- Click on that option to clear the cache and regenerate the sitemap.
If after flushing the cache, the old URLs are still present in the sitemap, you may need to check if there are any caching plugins active on your site that might be serving cached versions of the sitemap. Ensure that the caching plugin is not caching the sitemap files.
If the issue persists after trying these steps, please let us know, and we will assist you further.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Sources:
Why the Sitemap_Index.xml is Throwing a 404 Error » Rank Math
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that this issue might have caused.
The referenced page – https://www.webdew.com/marketing/seo is still available on your site doesn’t generate a 404 error.
Rank Math only includes pages/posts/CPTs that are set to index and whose Canonical URLs are self-referencing. If you find a URL that doesn’t meet both criteria it must be a caching issue.
In that case please follow the steps below for initial troubleshooting:
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/
If the issue persists then try disabling the transient cache for the sitemap. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site. To do this, you need to add a small piece of code to your site’s functions.php file or use a plugin like Code Snippets.
The code you need to add is this:
/**
* Filter if XML sitemap transient cache is enabled.
*
* @param boolean $unsigned Enable cache or not, defaults to true
*/
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide: https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/.
After you add the code, please clear any cache on your site or server and check your XML sitemap again. If you’re still facing issues with the sitemap, please let us know – we are happy to investigate further.
Hello Ike,
The URL https://www.webdew.com/marketing/seo is changed to this https://www.webdew.com/services/seo and old Url is redirected to new one.
Hello,
We might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress login 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/
We really look forward to helping you.
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.
