Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap and the ‘noindex’ tag in the HTTP header. To resolve this, you can follow these steps:
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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 sitemap is enabled and not set to noindex.
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Exclude Sitemap from Caching: Sometimes caching plugins can interfere with the sitemap. Make sure to exclude your sitemap from being cached. You can refer to our tutorial on how to exclude sitemaps from caching.
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Check for Plugin Conflicts: There might be a conflict with another plugin. You can use the Health Check plugin to troubleshoot this.
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Modify HTTP Headers: If the above steps do not resolve the issue, you may need to add a filter to your theme’s functions.php file to remove the noindex tag from the sitemap:
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false' );
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Contact Your Hosting Provider: If you still see the noindex tag after trying the above steps, it might be worth checking with your hosting provider to ensure there are no server-level restrictions affecting your sitemap.
Once you have made these changes, please resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console as described in our tutorial on submitting a sitemap to Google.
If you would like more comprehensive assistance, we recommend our professional setup service, which ensures your plugin setup is fully correct and adheres to the latest SEO standards. You can find more information about this service at Rank Math Services.
Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope this helps resolve your issue!
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
How to Fix "Incorrect HTTP Header Content-Type" Error in Sitemaps » 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. Even though it is set to Noindex, Google can crawl and read this without any issues.
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 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.
