Exclude Images not Excluding Images in SiteMap

please help me….

Hi @eac2015,

Thanks for reaching out and I apologize for the deplayed reply.

The exclude images from the sitemap feature can help with crawl efficiency and reduce redundancy, which allows for faster sitemap processing.

However, search engines can still index your images and display them in search results even if they’re not included in your sitemap. There’s no way to hide images from search engines, if you can see an image on your site then so can search engines.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

There are thousands of photos in my sitemap. There are at least 4 folders of attachments. Yes, I have that many pictures! Can you tell me why AIOSEO is not at all preventing them from being listed in the SITEMAP?

I understand they may still get indexed if they are not in the sitemap, but I still want them out of the sitemap. AIOSEO says it does that and there is a check box for it. I have had the box checked for years, yet my photos still appear in my Sitemap created by AIOSEO.

Thank you!

Just putting this here in case someone else has this confusion. I finally worked it out, though I feel my original question was misunderstood. I know that images can be indexed even if they are not in the sitemap. However, I still wanted them OUT of my sitemap.

There is a checkbox in AIOSEO that asks if you want to have images listed in the sitemap or not. I said NO. Nonetheless, my images (thousands) were still showing up in a list in my sitemap. FOUR directories of images.

I finally realized that the reason this was happening was that I had checked the box to include “attachments” in another section called Post Types. Apparently that overrides the Yes/No image button.

I was never confused that things could be indexed with or without the sitemap listings. I wanted my sitemap images links gone, and they finally are.

Hi @eac2015,

Thank you for sharing your experience and working through the confusion with the sitemap settings. I apologize for any misunderstanding in our previous communication.

You’re right—search engines can index images regardless of whether they appear in the sitemap.

If you’re referring to the Exclude Images settings under the All in One SEO > Sitemaps > General Sitemaps > Advanced Settings section, it will turn off the image counts for individual pages/posts.

As seen here: https://a.supportally.com/v/Sxw6Om

Regarding the default Media Attachment, if you have set the Redirect Attachment URLs setting to ‘Attachment‘ on the All in One SEO > Search Appearance > Image SEO section, then you do not need to uncheck the ‘Attachment‘ option on the sitemap Post Type (https://a.supportally.com/i/ehKEbQ). This is because you have already configured your attachment URLs to redirect as ‘Attachment‘ in the Image SEO settings.

As seen here- https://a.supportally.com/v/p7BUgk

These (media files) are thin pages that contain no SEO-valued content, so we recommended redirecting attachment URLs back to the attachment since the default WordPress attachment pages have little SEO value.

I’m glad you managed to resolve this, and I appreciate your detailed explanation—it will certainly help others who might face the same situation.

For more insights on managing media attachments and whether to submit them to search engines, you can check our comprehensive documentation here:

https://aioseo.com/docs/what-are-media-attachments-and-should-i-submit-them-to-search-engines/

I hope this helps.

Thanks again!