Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with pages appearing in your sitemap that shouldn’t be there. Thank you for raising this concern.
If you’ve already followed the steps mentioned in the support ticket you referenced and are still experiencing the problem, here are a few additional suggestions:
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Check for Custom Canonicals: Ensure that you do not have custom canonical URLs set for the posts/pages that are appearing in the sitemap. If custom canonicals are set, those pages may not show up correctly in the sitemap.
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Review Robots.txt: Make sure that your robots.txt file is not blocking any important pages from being indexed. You can check this in the Rank Math settings under Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.
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Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, simply flushing your permalinks can resolve issues with the sitemap. Go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Settings → Permalinks, and click Save Changes without making any changes.
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Plugin Conflicts: Use the Health Check plugin to identify if there are any conflicts with other plugins that might be affecting the sitemap generation.
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Clear Cache: If you are using a caching plugin, ensure to clear your cache after making changes to your sitemap settings.
If these steps do not resolve the issue, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will take over and assist you further.
Thank you for your patience, and we hope to resolve this for you soon!
Hello,
Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.
Upon checking the affected URLs, although they are served as 404, they seem to exist in the backend as you can see from the screenshot below:
In this case, you’ll have to delete them from WordPress or set them to noindex so Rank Math can remove them from the sitemap.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any other questions.
Hi there,
We have checked out backend.
Apart from that Naarden page you linked,, there is not a single published page that contains ‘-2’ in the URL. What now?
Hello,
Those pages were still in the published status in the database. We have moved them to trash and now they are no longer included in the sitemap.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Okay, so how are we able to avoid this in the future? Thanks for helping btw!
Hello,
Rank Math only includes posts/pages/CPTs with self-referencing canonical URLs and whose meta robots are set to index.
Typically this issue shouldn’t occur where the published status persist on the database for the page.
You may want to periodically review the auto-drafts/Revisions.
Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
The issue is back again, because we were in need of a backup due to an other problem.
How are we able to delete these pages from the database ourselves? So we can also take care of it?
thanks!
Hello,
You don’t need to do it using the database. Please follow these steps:
1. Open the page sitemap and click on the incorrect URLs.
2. Even if they show a 404 error, you will see the Edit Page option in the admin dashboard. Click on it to open the editor.
3. Use the Move to Trash option in the page settings to move it to the trash and remove it from the sitemap.
We have also added a screencast in the sensitive data section for your reference.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Is there a way to do this in bulk?
Hello,
No, there is no option to do it in bulk. Even if you do it directly in the database, you will have to search for each slug. The easiest way is to move the pages to trash using the page editor.
Please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
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.
