Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap showing old pages. It can be frustrating when changes are not reflected as expected. Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot this issue:
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Flush Permalinks: Since you’ve mentioned that you’ve already done this, ensure that you go to the Permalinks settings in your WordPress dashboard and click Save Changes again, even if you haven’t made any changes. This can sometimes help refresh the sitemap.
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Check for Plugin Conflicts: Sometimes, other plugins can interfere with how Rank Math generates the sitemap. You can use the Health Check plugin to check for any conflicts.
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Submit the Correct Sitemap: Make sure that you are submitting the correct sitemap URL to Google Search Console. The correct URL should be `https://rankmath.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Manual-Action.png. If you have submitted this URL and still see old pages, it might be worth resubmitting it.
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Clear Cache: Ensure that you clear any caching plugins you may have on your site, as well as server-side caching if applicable. You mentioned purging your sitemap cache, but also check if there are any other caching mechanisms in place.
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Check Robots.txt: Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking Google from accessing your sitemap or the pages you want indexed. You can check this in Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.
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Inspect URLs in Google Search Console: Use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console to check the status of specific URLs. This can provide insights into why certain pages are not being indexed.
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Wait for Reindexing: Sometimes, it may take a while for Google to reindex your pages after changes have been made. If you’ve done everything correctly, it might just be a matter of time.
If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket with any additional details or errors you might be encountering, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further. Thank you for your patience!
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
This is an automated reply from Rank Math Support Bot. Your ticket has been assigned to a human agent and we will get back to you shortly.
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Can you please share some old affected URLs which are still showing on your sitemap?
Meanwhile, please try to follow the steps below and see if that works for you:
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/
Once done, clear your website cache, remove all the submitted sitemap, and resubmit only the /sitemap_index.xml in the Search Console.
Regarding the indexing issue, please check your Google Search Console Page Indexing report to determine any issues reported on your site: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en
You can share the error message or take a screenshot using this tool and add the link here so we can check as well.
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
