changing structure on sitemap for Google refresh

#52595
  • Resolved Marcus Downey
    Rank Math free

    Hi

    When I type in site:headfonics.com, the majority of my sitemap shows up with a ‘blog’ category or archive. I think this is from a Yoast issue. Now when I moved to Rank Maths, new submissions and newly indexed resubmissions (go to the last page in site:headfonics.com)are showing correctly but the rest of the sitemap still shows the old blog method.

    Is there a way to overhaul this on the sitemap side so google will change this quicker? I have tried resubmitting a few days ago as well as submitting individual aspects to the main sitemap but not seeing changes on any link other than my manual ones.

    /category-sitemap.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 51
    /post-sitemap6.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 105
    /post-sitemap5.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 200
    /post-sitemap4.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 200
    /post-sitemap3.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 200
    /post-sitemap2.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 200
    /post-sitemap1.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 201
    /post-sitemap.xml Sitemap May 15, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 201
    /sitemap_index.xml Sitemap index May 12, 2020 May 15, 2020 Success 1,165

    I know 3 days is short but I would have expected 1 or 2 to be updated by now out of 1.1k.

    Also, if you look above I originally just posted sitemap_index.xml (for like years and years) which included the post-sitemap.xml pages but after reading one of your support guys saying submit them all I have done that. Would that be SOP or unneeded duplication?

    Thanks

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Marcus Downey.
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Alberto
    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    We usually recommend to just add sitemap_index.xml since Google already finds the other sitemaps using just it so it is not necessary to add any other (and also, since we divide big sitemaps in several smaller automatically, it is better to just add the sitemap_index.xml so if the other sitemaps change, it is automatically changed for Google).

    About why Google is not updating it faster, well, it really depends on Google and your crawl budget so we can’t say when it will be done since we have no control over it.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​​

    Thanks Albert – so it seems the individual pages are not in the current index on Google Search. Is that what you are seeing also on site:headfonics.com?

    WIll delete the additional entries then and just fo with the one submission.

    I also noticed that unlike Yoast you do not include page 2/3 etc of posts with page splits – Yoast included that. So now google search is saying about 50% of my site is indexed but not submitted in the Sitemap.

    Any reasoning behind the methodology?

    Alberto
    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    We follow that methodology for the reasons you can read explained here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/pagination/

    But if you want, you can disable that function like I show you in this image:
    null

    Looking forward to help you.

    I just read that and it seems it flys against your default setting not to index paginated pages.

    I quote

    “Noindex Paginated Pages
    no index paginated URLs

    A classic method to solve pagination issues was a robots noindex tag to prevent paginated content from being indexed by search engines.

    Relying solely on the noindex tag for pagination handling will result in any ranking signals from component pages being disregarded.

    However, the larger issue with this method is that a long-term noindex on a page will eventually lead Google to nofollow the links on that page.

    This could cause content linked from the paginated pages to be removed from the index.”

    I also checked, my noinxdex of paginated pages is set to off but the sitemap still does not include them nor are they being indexed by google – the sitemap is half the size of the old one.

    I think I am going to have to ask you guys to take a stronger look at this. The performance has dropped since installing Rank.

    Alberto
    Rank Math business

    We might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
    Sensitive Data Section

    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.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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