All indexed posts disappeared and sitemap zero discovered URLs

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.

For initial troubleshooting, please follow these steps to flush your 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/

3. Disable the transient cache for the sitemap by applying this filter. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site:

/** 
 * 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/

Once done, remove all your submitted sitemaps and resubmit your main sitemap only /sitemap_index.xml.

Also, you should check your Google Search Console > Indexing > Pages section to determine any issues reported on your URLs that may have prevented your site from being indexed:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7440203?hl=en

To better understand the status reported, you may refer to our guide here:
https://rankmath.com/kb/url-inspection-api-integration/#not-indexed

Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

To assist in further investigating this, could you please provide a screenshot of your Google Search Console’s Page Indexing Report? This will allow us to understand the situation better and provide the appropriate support.

You can also request the indexing of your pages by passing it through the URL Inspection Tool and request it there: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl. The tool will also let you know if there are any issues on the URL that prevent them from getting indexed.

Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Hello,

We can see from the screenshot that there are a couple of issues affecting the indexing of your posts and pages. We’ll help you figure out how to resolve them.

We have shared links to articles with guides on how to troubleshoot the issues listed.

#1 Crawled – currently not indexed:
KB: https://rankmath.com/kb/crawled-currently-not-indexed/

#2 Not found (404):
KB: https://rankmath.com/kb/find-the-source-of-404-errors/ and https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-404-errors/

#3 Excluded by ‘noindex’ tag
KB: https://rankmath.com/kb/excluded-by-noindex-tag/

#4 Alternate page with proper canonical tag
KB: https://rankmath.com/kb/alternate-page-with-proper-canonical-tag/

Please take time to go over each article shared relating to the problem displayed in the Google Search Console.

We hope that helps, and please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.

Thank you.

Hello,

This tag you mentioned is shown when you are logged in to your website admin.

You’ll notice at the WP Admin top bar when you are viewing any page of your website, that there is a Rank Math icon that provides shortcuts to options available in the Rank Math settings and tools.

Part of the shortcut available is the option to quickly mark or set the page you are viewing as “No Index” or “No follow” as shown in the image below:

What you see when you are viewing the source code of your webpage is the HTML output of the wp Admin top bar.

This does not set the webpage or your entire website with the ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ tag.

You can view your website or the webpage in incognito mode or view the page when you have signed out of your WordPress dashboard to confirm this.

Hope this clarifies the issue for you and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.

Thank you.