Parent product categories not showing up in sitemap (Woocommerce)

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your parent product categories not showing up in the sitemap. To ensure that your parent product categories are included in the sitemap, you can follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Rank Math Settings: Go to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings in your WordPress dashboard.
2. Product Categories Tab: Look for the Product Categories tab where you can configure how your product category archives are included in the sitemap.
3. Include in Sitemap: Make sure that the option to include product categories in the sitemap is enabled. This setting allows the parent categories to be indexed as well.

If you have already checked these settings and the parent category is still not appearing, it might be due to how the categories are structured or other settings within your WooCommerce or Rank Math configuration.

For more detailed guidance, you can refer to our documentation on configuring sitemaps: How to Configure Sitemaps in Rank Math.

If the issue persists, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern!

Sources:
How to Configure Sitemaps in Rank Math – Best Settings and Tips

Hello,

Could you please share the actual parent category URL so we can check as well? You can add it to the sensitive data section by editing your first post

It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section.

Meanwhile, you may check our guide here for the common reasons why a URL is not showing in the sitemap:
https://rankmath.com/kb/url-not-in-sitemap/

Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

Please try to follow the steps below and see if that works for you.

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 we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.

Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

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/

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

Thank you.

Hello,

We can see that the parent category page you shared is actually redirecting to two other pages. See the image in the sensitive data section.

By default, a page must be set to index(meta robot) and have a self-referencing canonical URL to be included in the sitemap.

Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else