Category sitemap – 404

Hello,

I’m sorry to hear that you are facing issues with the category sitemap on your site. Enabling the “Include empty terms” option in Rank Math should not affect the inclusion of other post categories in the sitemap, even if they have respective canonical URLs.

If the category pages still exist on your site but are not showing up in the sitemap, there might be other reasons causing this issue. One common reason could be that the category pages are empty with no posts attached, which could lead to their exclusion from the sitemap.

To troubleshoot this further, you can check if the category pages have any posts attached to them. If they are empty, you may need to add content to those categories or adjust the settings in Rank Math to include empty terms in the sitemap.

If you continue to face issues with specific category pages not appearing in your sitemap, feel free to reach out to our dedicated support team for further assistance. You can contact them here.

Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention. Let us know if you need any further assistance.

Sources:
Why Isn’t My URL Included in the Sitemap? » Rank Math
How to Configure Sitemaps in Rank Math – Best Settings and Tips
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Why the Sitemap_Index.xml is Throwing a 404 Error » Rank Math
How to Configure Sitemaps in Rank Math – Best Settings and Tips

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us, and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

Could you please share your affected sitemap URL with us so that we can check the issue further for you?

Meanwhile, please head over to your WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Titles & Meta, and from there make sure the category archive robots meta is set to index. Once done, 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/

3. If the above steps don’t seem to work, kindly apply the following filter to your site.

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

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

Thank you.

Hello,

In your first message, you mentioned that you have changed the canonical URL of your category pages.

Please note that the canonical box’s purpose would be to inform search engines that it is a duplicate page and should not be indexed. Hence, removing them from the sitemap.

Here’s a link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/kb/url-not-in-sitemap/#custom-canonical-url

Let us know how this goes.

Hello,

We apologize for the wrong information shared by RankBot, this is a new AI that we implemented on the support forum to assist users with simple issues that don’t require a human agent.

You can always request a human agent by replying to the ticket or by clicking on the Assign to Human button.

However, if you have any other concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime to assist you further.

Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

We are glad to hear that this issue has been resolved. Thank you for letting us know. This ticket will be closed now, but you can always open a new one if you have any other questions or concerns. We are here to help you with anything related to Rank Math.

We appreciate your patience and cooperation throughout this process.

Thank you for choosing Rank Math.