Noindex issue

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap. It seems that the x-robots-tag: noindex header is preventing Google from fetching your sitemap, which can be quite frustrating.

Here are some steps you can take to resolve this issue:

1. Check Rank Math Settings: Ensure that your sitemap settings in Rank Math are configured correctly. Go to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings and verify that the settings for your posts and pages are set to index.

2. Exclude Sitemap from Caching: Since you mentioned that you disabled NitroPack, ensure that there are no other caching mechanisms in place that might be affecting your sitemap. You can also add a filter to your theme’s rank-math.php file to exclude the sitemap from caching:

   /**
   * 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' );

   After adding this code, save the changes and check your sitemap again.

3. Check Robots Meta Tag: Ensure that the robots meta tag for your sitemap is not set to noindex. You can do this by navigating to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and ensuring that the settings for your posts and pages allow indexing.

4. Inspect HTTP Headers: Use a tool like httpstatus.io to inspect the HTTP headers of your sitemap again after making these changes. Ensure that the x-robots-tag header is no longer set to noindex.

5. Resubmit Your Sitemap: Once you have made the necessary changes, resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console as described in our tutorial here.

If you continue to experience issues after following these steps, we recommend replying to this ticket so a human agent from our support team can assist you further. Please include any additional details or changes you’ve made.

Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention, and we hope to help you resolve it soon!

Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math
Why the Sitemap_Index.xml is Throwing a 404 Error » Rank Math
How to Fix "Incorrect HTTP Header Content-Type" Error in Sitemaps » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We understand your concern about the sitemap being set as ‘noindex’, but we assure you that this is how it should be.

The reason is that we don’t want Google to index the sitemap itself, we only want them to index the pages and posts that are listed on the sitemap. The sitemap is just a way to tell Google what pages and posts you have on your website, not a page that you want to show up in search results.

The important thing is that your pages and posts are set to ‘index’, which means that they are eligible to appear in Google search results.

You can check this by looking at the Rank Math settings on each page or post, or by using the Google URL Inspection tool.

To make sure that Google knows about your sitemap and can crawl your pages and posts, you need to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

This is a simple process that you can follow by using our tutorial: https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/

Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you.

Hello,

Please follow this guide to troubleshoot the couldn’t fetch issue: https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/

If everything is fine on your end, and Google still returns the error, please note that not all sitemaps are processed by Google. Not necessarily because there is something wrong with the sitemap.

Even a perfect sitemap may not be processed by Google.

Most of the time, it’s still sitting in the queue waiting for processing. Remember, Google is processing millions of sitemap daily, sometimes it takes time to get to yours. But for whatever reason, Google never gets around to some sitemaps. It just doesn’t think it is worth it.

And Search Console sometimes shows ‘Pending’ as ‘couldn’t fetch’ incorrectly. You can check the replies of Google experts for the Couldn’t Fetch(especially for the TLDs except for .com) issues on the following threads:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/29055233/missing-xml-sitemap-data-in-google-search-console-for-tld-domain?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/31835653/sitemap-couldn-t-fetch-sitemap-couldn-t-be-read-by-google-search-console?hl=en

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

Hello,

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

We checked your sitemap again, but were not able to find any issues there:

However, if you still want to set your sitemap to index, you can use the following filter on your website:

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/http_headers', function( $headers ) {
	if ( '/sitemap_index.xml' !== $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] ) {
		return $headers;
	}
	unset( $headers['X-Robots-Tag'] );
	return $headers;
} );

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

After applying the filter, please clear your sitemap cache by following this screencast: https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp

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

Thank you.