Remove Noindex Pages From Sitemap

#56564
  • Resolved Kyle Tully
    Rank Math free

    Is there a simple way to remove noindex pages from the sitemap?

    As ahrefs says, “Sitemap must list all the pages you want search engines to crawl and index, while a noindex meta tag instructs search engine bots not to index a page. Such a combination is contradictory.”

    We have a large site with a good deal of pages that are noindexed for various reasons, so far I can only see a way to remove them by manually adding each page/post ID.

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Kyle Tully.
Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Alberto
    Rank Math business

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

    That is completely normal, you shouldn’t worry about removing them since those pages won’t be indexed if you have selected the noindex option for them, even being in the sitemap.

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

    It might be “normal” but it’s not optimal because it’s wasting crawl budget and in our use-case also creating crawl errors in Google Search Console.

    Seems it would be a very simple thing to add a checkbox “exclude noindex pages from sitemap” and be able to take care of this without having to manually go through and add the ID of every page ourselves.

    Thanks!

    • This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Kyle Tully.

    Hello,

    Sorry for the confusion. Rank Math plugin only adds indexed pages in the Sitemap. Please try clearing your site’s cache. You can also update the permalinks and Sitemap Settings to flush the cache.

    If this doesn’t help then we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
    Sensitive Data Section

    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/

    We really look forward to helping you.

    Hello,

    I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?

    Thank you.

    Thanks Pratik, I’ve cleared cache and updated settings in the RankMath sitemap setting and the noindex pages are still in the sitemap.

    I’ve added a temp login link for you to take a look.

    Cheers
    Kyle

    Hello,

    Thank you for the follow up.

    Would you please share with us URL to the affected post(s). I have checked a number of your posts, and I can’t seem to replicate your issue.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​

    Hello,

    I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?

    Thank you.

    Thanks I updated the sensitive data with some examples.

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math today.

    You seemed to have two pages named login, you had only one set to noindex. I have set the other one too. I also updated the store page and your sitemap seems to have update perfectly fine. If you have a similar situation with other pages, please update the page and clear cache.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    ​​​​​​

    Awesome, thanks guys!

    Todd
    Rank Math free

    Hello,

    We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.

    If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.

    If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.

    Thank you.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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