Sitemap can’t include subfile

Hello,

I’m sorry to hear about the issue you are facing with your sitemap in Google Search Console. If your sitemap is not including subfiles like post-sitemap.xml, page-sitemap.xml, or category-sitemap.xml, and the number of web pages found does not match the actual number, there could be a few reasons for this discrepancy.

1. Incorrect Sitemap Submission: Ensure that you have submitted the correct XML sitemap to Google. The correct URL to submit should be something like _https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/.

2. Plugin Conflict: Check for any plugin conflicts that might be affecting the sitemap generation. You can use the Health Check plugin to identify and resolve any conflicts.

3. Custom Canonicals: If you have custom canonicals set for your posts, they might not appear in the sitemap. Remove any custom canonicals to allow Rank Math to generate the canonical URLs.

4. Exclusion Settings: Check your Rank Math settings to ensure that the subfiles like post-sitemap.xml, page-sitemap.xml, or category-sitemap.xml are not excluded under the Sitemap tab.

5. Empty Archive Pages: If category/tag/custom taxonomy archive pages are being excluded, make sure they are not empty. Enable the "Include Empty Terms" option in your category/tag/custom taxonomy archive settings.

If after checking these points, the issue persists, please consider reaching out to our dedicated support team by submitting a ticket here. They are available 24/7 to assist you further.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and we appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue for you.

Best regards.

Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Why GSC Shows "No Referring Sitemaps Detected"
Why Isn’t My URL Included in the Sitemap? » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.

It appears that Google was able to process your sitemap without any issues.

However, there are no URLs or sub-sitemaps being discovered yet. Please note that each time Google uses a sitemap to find a URL, the count of the Discovered URLs increases by one. Sitemaps is only one of the few methods Google uses to discover your URLs.

When the count of the Discovered URLs is zero or does not match your actual sitemap in your Google Search Console, it means Google didn’t use the sitemap to find the URLs.

It mostly happens when you have good internal linking or use the Instant Indexing plugin.

Here’s a link for more information:
https://rankmath.com/kb/zero-discovered-urls-through-sitemap/

What you can try right now is to flush the sitemap and resubmit it.

Please follow the steps below:

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/

3. Apply the following filter code to your site.

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

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

4. Remove all sitemaps from your GSC and resbumit only the primary one (https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml)

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