Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap not updating. It can be frustrating when things don’t work as expected. Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot the issue:
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Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, simply saving the permalinks can help. Go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard and click Save Changes without making any changes.
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Check Sitemap Settings: Ensure that the categories you want to exclude are indeed deselected in the Rank Math settings. You can find this under Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings.
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Clear Cache: If you are using a caching plugin, clear your website cache. This can often resolve issues where changes are not reflected immediately.
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Validate Your Sitemap: Use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check if your sitemap is correctly configured. This can help identify any underlying issues.
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Check Robots.txt: Ensure that your sitemap is not being blocked by your robots.txt file. You can check this under Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.
If you’ve tried all these steps and the issue persists, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so we can assist you further. A human agent from our support team will take over and provide more specific guidance.
Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope to resolve it for you soon!
Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » 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.
I did everything you asked, but nothing worked. THe page url is in the sensitive data
ok WOW, it ONLY (!) updates if you post a new blog post, or add a new site. So everytime I want to change something in the sitemap, I need to post something new. However, I dont want to include the newly added post. So I need that newly post ID in the de-include list … WOW .. not very user friendly
Hello,
Your sitemaps should be updated in real time if you delete a post or set it to noindex.
Please follow these steps to flush your sitemap cache:
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. Disable the transient cache for the sitemap by applying this filter. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site:
/**
* Filter if XML sitemap transient cache is enabled.
*
* @param boolean $unsigned Enable cache or not, defaults to true
*/
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/
Looking forward to helping you.
The support is really insanely bad. 100% AI. Did you read my post? LOL. I am switching now
Hello,
Rank Math’s sitemap will include a post as long as it is published, indexed, and has a self-referencing canonical URL. This is standard behavior and is consistent across some other major SEO plugins. If you wish to remove a published post from the sitemap, you can use the provided exclusion field to do so.
If the sitemap isn’t updating as expected after making changes, the steps we shared earlier, flushing the sitemap cache, excluding sitemap files from caching, and disabling transient caching will ensure your sitemap reflects the latest updates in real time.
We understand this workflow might feel less intuitive in certain cases, but it is designed to maintain consistency and reliability in your sitemaps.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any other questions.
