Hello, I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing this issue with deleted URLs still showing up in the rank_math_3b0e0df357b0ebfd56373c237bcaa107.xml file.
This issue could be due to caching or a conflict with another plugin. To resolve this, please follow these steps:
- Clear the cache on your website and server.
- Check for any plugin conflicts using the Health Check plugin.
- If you are running W3 Total Cache along with Rank Math, create another user agent group and add the ‘googlebot’ user agent to it as mentioned in this guide.
- If the issue persists, add the following filter in your theme’s functions.php or rank-math.php file:
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
After following these steps, please check if the deleted URLs are still showing up in the sitemap file. If the issue persists, please let us know, and we’ll be happy to assist you further.
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Random URLs Redirecting Even When No Redirect Was Created » Rank Math
Common robots.txt Issues & How to Fix Them » Rank Math
Solving Redirection Issues Using Rank Math SEO Plugin » Rank Math
How to Fix “Duplicate, Google Chose Different Canonical than User” » Rank Math
Hello??? Is anyone here??
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that this issue might have caused.
The correct URL for the sitemap generated by Rank Math is Yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml (Yourdomain.com should be replaced with the actual domain of your site). If the URLs you have deleted are still reflected in the sitemap it might imply a caching issue persists. Please follow the steps below for initial troubleshooting:
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/
If the issue persists then try disabling the transient cache for the sitemap. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site. To do this, you need to add a small piece of code to your site’s functions.php file or use a plugin like Code Snippets.
The code you need to add is this:
/**
* 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/.
It will show you step-by-step how to use the Code Snippets plugin or edit the functions.php file safely.
After you add the code, please clear any cache on your site or server and check your XML sitemap again. If you’re still facing issues with the sitemap, please let us know – we are happy to investigate further.
They are not showing in original sitemap cache. They are showing in folder I shared.
I used string locator plugin to see where the deleted url is exactly present. Through that step, I found the folder I shared with you.
Since you integrated Ai in your support, it has got extremely poor.For several days, no one bothers to reply
Helllo? The support is really pathetic. No one replies.
Hello,
Apologies for the delay as we prioritize older tickets, and whenever you post a reply here, your ticket is getting bumped to the top.
This was happening because of the caching on the sitemap. However, if you have added the filter above, you may delete all the past XML files that were part of the caching.
The plugin will no longer load from these files and the caching should not be an issue moving forward.
You can check in a couple of hours the following folder as well.
If you don’t see any XML files there, you can be sure that it’s not getting cached.
Hope that helps.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Hello,
Regarding the issue you’re facing, it seems like Google is still indexing the URLs that have been deleted from your website. This can happen if Google had previously crawled these URLs before they were deleted. It might take some time for Google to update its index and stop crawling these URLs.
In the meantime, you can request Google to remove these URLs from its index using the Google Search Console’s Removals tool. This tool allows you to temporarily block pages from Google Search results on sites that you own. https://search.google.com/search-console/removals?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=1663419.
Please note that this is a temporary solution and it’s still important to ensure that the deleted URLs return a 404 or 410 HTTP status code. This signals to Google that the page has been permanently removed and should be dropped from their index.
We hope this helps. If you have any other questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Urls are deleted from google already. but still google is crawling them.
Hello,
Please submit the affected URLs to your GSC’s URL inspection tool and share a screenshot of the report here. We need to see its referring URL.
You can use this tool to share your screenshots: https://imgur.com/
Looking forward to helping you.
As I said, I inspected them. In referring page, post-sitemap.xml url is displayed.
Hello,
Since Google discovered those URLs before using the post-sitemap, they will still show the sitemap in the URL inspection result even if the pages no longer exist. There is nothing to be worried about, as Google has already removed them from the SERPs.
I hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Sorry I couldn’t get. Why post-sitemap.xml url is showing in referring page?
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.
