I have now added a staging site through the plugin WP Staging. It was not possible to do it directly with my hosting company. The login details are the same as previously submitted.
The html-sitemap problem still persists:

Sitemap can be read, but has errors
Sitemap is HTML
I do hope we get to solve both issues soon, thanks for your time
Hello,
Thank you for following up.
I’ve tried checking the staging site you have provided, and it seems that the noindex meta tag is not showing there. Your sitemap is still being cached by your W3 Total Cache plugin even following the steps in our knowledge base link
Could you please try temporarily disable that plugin on your site and see the source code of your sitemap if it will be removed? You can also check the affected URL if the noindex meta tag will be removed in the page’s source code after doing so.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
I’ve disabled W3 can see the source code of the sitemap (but don’t know if that was also possible before).
The other pages still show noindex. It seems to be mainly the /de pages that are affected, could that be any indicator for the problem?
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up.
We may need to further check this issue with the translated version of your website. However, I’ve already passed this to our dev team for a closer investigation and will be back to you shortly.
Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime to assist you further with anything else.
Thank you.
Hello,
You have a noindex added to the URLs in question even when Rank Math is disabled.
Please check the screencast we shared in the sensitive data section as proof.
So, we checked the core settings and found this option enabled:
https://i.rankmath.com/vLzYdV
That is what is adding the noindex to your entire website and disabling that option fixes the problem:
https://i.rankmath.com/vLzYdV
Hope that helps.
Hello Support,
Unfortunately, the problem still persists. The check box is disabled. And I am sure also has been in the past as I have not yet had this warning before from Search Console. If the box was briefly checked (perhaps after an update?) it had only affected some pages from not being indexed not all.
Hello,
Thank you for the follow-up, and sorry for the delay.
I’ve tried investigating your site, and indeed the noindex meta tag is still being printed even if Rank Math and the search engine visibility are disabled.
However, I’ve also noticed that this meta tag is only being added to your translated pages /de/, specifically the categories page.
Have you tried contacting WPML about this and see if they have encountered this issue before? Please let us know their side as well regarding this.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Yes, I have contacted them and they say it cannot be a WPML issue, as they don’t add any noindex tag to the code of the page.
Any idea how to proceed? Thanks
Hello,
Thank you for the update, and sorry for the delay.
Since this issue is happening to your translated pages even with Rank Math is disabled, you may need to find the culprit manually by disabling your plugins/theme one by one as the issue is not visible in the staging site you have created and the health check plugin is not working on your live site.
In this process, you will determine which of them is adding the noindex meta tag to your translated pages. Please note that by doing this, your site visitors will be affected. I would suggest using any maintenance/under construction plugin while doing this.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you need further assistance.
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.
