sitemap.html: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag

  • Resolved tyco72

    (@tyco72)


    4 years, 2 months ago

    Hello everybody,
    since the 2nd September I am having this error and I can’t fix it.

    ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag

    Submitted URL marked ‘noindex’ :
    https://www.tycospages.com/sitemap.html

    The sitemap.html page is reachable. In the settings of the plugin, the option “Include sitemap in HTML format” is marked.
    Now I have added also the sitemap.html entry in my robots.txt, but it doesn’t help. Before now, I had only the entry for the .xml file, and there were no problems before the 2nd September. My robots file contains:

    ————-
    User-Agent: *
    Allow: /tycospageswp1/wp-content/uploads/
    Allow: /tycospageswp1/wp-content/uploads/images/
    Allow: /tycospageswp1/wp-content/download/
    Disallow: /tycospageswp1/wp-content/plugins/
    Disallow: /tycospageswp1/wp-admin/
    Disallow: /tycospageswp1/readme.html
    Disallow: /tycospageswp1/refer/
    Disallow: /download/
    disallow: /backup/
    disallow: /audio/

    sitemap: https://www.tycospages.com/sitemap.xml
    sitemap: https://www.tycospages.com/sitemap.html
    ————-

    What does cause the error?
    Can it be that the page https://www.tycospages.com/sitemap.html exists no more in the sitemap.xml file?
    The the problem would be in the plugin.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • I am also having this issue. Does anybody have any insight?

    I have temporarily disabled the html creation, I only have the xml until I fix the problem, and for now the search console warning disappeared

    Thread Starter tyco72

    (@tyco72)

    I have found something. Open the url of your sitemap.html and then view the source code in the browser. Check whether in the <html> tag there is the entry:

    …<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”/>…

    This should be the cause of the error. If I have understood correctly, this tag prevents that the searach engines index this page.

    But now my question is:
    Should the sitemap.html page be indexed?
    It is actually crawled only by the bots, it doesn’t need to be indexed as a page of the site. Maybe google consdiers it as a normal page of the site, because google is only interested to the sitemap.xml.
    In this case we could ignore the error. Or the developer of the plugin could remove that tag from the sitemap.html page.

    It shouldn’t be indexed, but the error shouldn’t appear either. I have pages that are not indexed, such as privacy policy, cookies … and I do not get those errors on those pages.

    I’m seeing the same problem. As the robots.txt file is generated by WordPress, is the problem with this plugin as it adds the sitemap URL to robots?
    Presumably if you untick the “Add sitemap URL to the virtual robots.txt file” it’ll probably be okay but can see it’s only happened in the last week or so.

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by tobyw7.
    Thread Starter tyco72

    (@tyco72)

    I am not using the robots file generarated by WordPress. The problem is not in the robots file. It is in the tag:
    <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”/>

    contained in the sitemap.html file, generated by the plugin. This tag impedes the robots to index the sitemap.html page, but the page is probably contained in the sitemap.xml file, then there is a conflict. I think that we can ignore the error, since the sitemap.html page should not be indexed indeed.
    I just wonder why the developer of the plugin is not giving an answer.

    Plugin Author Auctollo

    (@auctollo)

    @tyco72,

    We are sorry to hear that you came across this issue.

    Our team is aware of it and are working hard at releasing an update for it. It should be out shortly.

    Once this update is released, we recommend updating our plugin to the latest version.

    Thread Starter tyco72

    (@tyco72)

    Hello. Thank you for the info. I will check it with the update.

    I also am having the same error or I believe it is.

    Google Console states the sitemap is labeled noindex.

    @auctollo
    Is there any word on this update anytime soon? I know others state that it should not matter. Nevertheless in terms of SEO it could matter as a sitemap is one of the pieces they like to reference. This is impacting one of my 4 sites at the moment

    Google is asking for validation via console for it to be corrected.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • The topic ‘sitemap.html: ‘noindex’ detected in ‘robots’ meta tag’ is closed to new replies.