Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the x-robots-tag: noindex being added to your sitemap by Rank Math. It seems like there might be a setting or configuration that is causing this behavior.
To troubleshoot this issue, please follow these steps:
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Check Rank Math Settings: Go to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta Settings and ensure that you have not set any global settings that might be affecting your sitemap.
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Review the Sitemap Settings: Navigate to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings and check if there are any options related to indexing that might be set incorrectly.
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Inspect Individual Pages: Open the Rank Math Metabox for your sitemap page (if applicable) and check the Advanced tab to see if the Robots Meta is set to No Index. If it is, change it to Index and update the page.
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Check for Conflicting Plugins: Sometimes, other plugins can conflict with Rank Math. Try disabling other SEO-related plugins temporarily to see if the issue persists.
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Clear Cache: If you are using a caching plugin, clear your cache after making changes to ensure that the latest settings are applied.
If you have gone through these steps and the issue still persists, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so that a human agent from our support team can assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern, and we are here to help!
Sources:
Fix Excluded by NoIndex Tag – Google Search Console Status » Rank Math
Fix Excluded by NoIndex Tag – Google Search Console Status » Rank Math
This is an automated reply from Rank Math Support Bot. Your ticket has been assigned to a human agent and we will get back to you shortly.
Hello,
Please note that the sitemaps are by default set to Noindex as they are meant to be crawled and not to be displayed on search results pages.
You should only submit your sitemap to the sitemap section of your GSC account and shouldn’t use the URL inspection tool for the sitemap URLs.
https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/
In case, you still want to index your sitemap, 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 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
Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.
