Sitemap error

Hello,

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

For your sitemap issue, can you please follow these steps?

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/

That should fix the issue. Please let me know if that does not.

On the issue with meta description

1. First of all, assuming that you have already changed the SEO Meta Title and Meta Description with the help of Rank Math:
Add a Meta Description in Classic Editor:

Add title and description in Gutenberg:

2. Then, ensure that this is the setting in the Schema tab if the Schema Markup module is enabled on your website:

To reiterate, the Schema title must show %seo_title% and the description should show %seo_description% – this will ensure your SEO title and SEO Description that you set up via Rank Math can also be used for your Schema details.

3. The next step is to check if your title/description is properly set up in the page source:

You can use this tool for the same as well: https://www.heymeta.com/

4. If it matches your settings, then you must check if Google has seen the changes already or not.

For that, please check when the Google cache was updated for that page:
a.
b.

If the cache date is from before adding the new meta description, then you just have to wait for Google to re-crawl and re-index the page with the new info. If the date is after you made the changes, then you just have to wait it out and there is no further input needed from your end.

Do note that if everything’s fine and Google still decides to show a different meta title/description for your search keyword, there is nothing you can do as Google sometimes ignores the custom meta info altogether and show something from the page’s content that matches the search intent better.

Here are some of the common reasons Google might not use the meta description you provided:
– The meta description is not relevant or useful (ie, just a collection of keywords).
– The exact same meta description is provided across a large number of pages.
– The meta description doesn’t match what the user is searching for, but other content on the page does.

There is a whole article dedicated to this on SearchEngineJournal:
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-offers-suggestions-for-avoiding-meta-description-rewrites/359884/

Here is an example showing Google changes title depending on the keyword used:

&

The best you can do is optimize your meta tags to try and match the intent of the search/keyword.

Hope that helps. If you have any further question(s), please let us know.