Incorrect link in Sitemap

This latest update of them set off everything. Besides being generated a different url of the title the sitemap is also giving error and not reading.

Are Yoast developers fixing this?
Our traffic is down 30% and we are sweating!!

Hi @sanjay,

The Search Index Purge plugin is supposed to add the attachment-sitemap.xml back, this is intentional.

The plugin does 2 things:

• re-enables the attachment sitemap, so Google will crawl all of the attachment pages URLs again
• sets a 410 status code for each attachment page (which may show as 404 on WordPress, but the HTTP status should be 410). This is done to get the attachment pages removed from Google’s index as soon as possible.

At the moment, your /attachment-sitemap.xml and /sitemap_index.xml URLs are redirecting to /sitemap.xml, which is a blank page. Is this on purpose?

We recommend removing the redirects mentioned above, so that we can check the /attachment-sitemap.xml and let you know if it’s working as expected or if there are any issues.

Considering the criticality of the situation I contacted your support team directly, but they redirected me to paid support. It was very disappointing to not assist for a major issue caused by the plugin. Anyways…

I posted on the forum but there was no response for 3 days.

I installed another sitemap plugin & disabled Yoast sitemap feature.

Would it be possible for you to enable Yoast SEO generated XML sitemap on your site so that we can take a look at the issue and investigate this further?

Sure, lets just wait for the Purge Plugin issue (being discussed in a separate thread on this forum) to get fixed and then we can look at this.

My SEO already looks messed up & I want to play safe, let the traffic and SERPs restore to the previous levels.

That said, if you need it just for testing, we can do it for a couple of minutes. We can sync up offline over Skype or Handout. Let me know if this helps.

Thanks

Unfortunately, we will be unable to provide support for the free version of Yoast SEO outside of this forum. Again, if you’ve installed the Search Index Purge plugin, it should:

~re-enable the attachment sitemap, so Google will crawl all of the attachment pages URLs again
~set a 410 status code for each attachment page (which may show as 404 on WordPress, but the HTTP status should be 410). This is done to get the attachment pages removed from Google’s index as soon as possible.

You might want to consider getting a subscription for Yoast SEO Premium to receive personalized support — https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/

Thanks.

Sitemap re-enabled.
https://www.31west.net/sitemap_index.xml

We looked at your attachment sitemap and we can confirm that these following media files are throwing 403 forbidden error:

• https://www.31west.net/home/vxl
• https://www.31west.net/home/foologo

This means there are these two media files somewhere on your site which is adding by the purge plugin. Please, make sure that you don’t have these files on your site. If you do, you can remove them to ensure these are not included in the attachment sitemap and that should fix the issue.

Hi,

I’ve deleted those 2 image files.

I see there are many such images https://www.31west.net/attachment-sitemap.xml
Why did you pick those 2 files only?

I would like to understand the reasons.

Thanks,

Hi Sanjay,

Those URLs were the only ones returning a 403 status code. The other links return 410, which is working as intended by the Search Index Purge plugin.

After ~6 months, when the attachment pages will all have been removed from Google’s index, you can deactivate and delete the Search Index Purge plugin.

Thanks Marius!

Another bunch of 403 reported in GSC.
https://prnt.sc/kbaadf
https://prnt.sc/kbaaxj

Pls let me know if I need to take any action?

Thanks,
Sans