Sitemap includes private page/post

Hi @favevory ,

When viewing https://www.favevory.com/300f0-web-agency-news/, this is what we’re only seeing.

Private posts/pages should not be shown in the sitemap and it’s working on Yoast SEO 14.8 as tested.

If this is not working for you, please make sure to clear your cache (plugin/theme/server) and refresh your sitemap again.

Hi Jerlyn,

Yes this is what I see too after I deleted all my private posts. Before deletion this link also showed all my private posts which should not have appeared in the sitemap.

I clear all caches and the link (https://www.favevory.com/300f0-web-agency-news/) is still there. This is quite unusual as I can’t find this link in any of my posts and static pages hence I can’t remove it.

I used other sitemap generators and they didn’t show this link in the sitemap.

I wonder how I can remove this link from Yoast sitemap.

Fave

Hi @favevory,

We understand that you deleted all the private posts. We can see one of them https://www.favevory.com/300f0-web-agency-news/ is still reachable and appears in a post sitemap. I can imagine this can be annoying.

We have a few more suggestions for you to try:

1. It appears that you’ve WP Fastest Cache enabled on your website. Can you please clear all cache or temporarily disable this cache plugin and see if the issue resolves?

2. Try to disable and enable the Yoast sitemap from SEO > Features(tab) section

3. Update the permalinks from the Settings > Permalink page.

Hi Suwash,

Done 1~3 but I still see the link.
BTW the link showed last modified on August 1.
How can I manually remove this link from my sitemap ?

Thanks.

Fave

Hi @favevory,

We’re sorry that this issue still persists.

Just to be sure, we would like to rule out any plugin or theme conflicts that may occur. The fastest way to do this is to?deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme?like?Twenty Nineteen.?

Test this on your development or staging site, if you have one. If not, we recommend using the?Health Check & Troubleshooting?plugin. This plugin allows you to run a conflict check?without affecting normal visitors to your site.

As we can imagine that you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide that will walk you through the process:?How to check for plugin conflicts.

Do you find any conflicting plugin or theme?

As of your next question, if the given post can be located in your admin it can be removed by setting this post to noindex from Yoast SEO Metabox.

Hi @suascat_wp ,

The healthcheck plugin is incompatible with my WP version.
Could you guide me to remove the link in Yoast SEO Metabox ?

Thanks.

Fave

@favevory,

To ‘noindex’ the post, edit the post and scroll down to the Yoast SEO meta box below the default WordPress content editor. In the Advanced tab, for the option to “Allow search engines to show this Post in search results?”, choose “No”.

Hi @maybellyne ,

This post https://www.favevory.com/300f0-web-agency-news/ cannot be found in all my posts and pages hence I can’t do what you’ve advised.

But strangely it can be accessed when you click on it.

I’m looking at ways to have it removed from my sitemap as it’s not supposed to there.

Thanks.

Fave

@favevory Thanks for your reply. We reviewed the source code for the https://www.favevory.com/300f0-web-agency-news/ page and do see that the ‘noindex’ tag is being output (see image here), so the page should not be included in the sitemap.

If you are still experiencing an issue with the sitemap not updating after checking your caching settings, we would next recommend to try forcing a cache reset by temporarily disabling the sitemap feature, and then re-enabling. To do so please perform the following steps:

? In WordPress go to SEO>General>Features
? For ‘XML Sitemaps’ toggle the switch to ‘Disabled.’
? Click ‘Save Changes.’
? Toggle the switch back to ‘Enabled.’
? Click ‘Save Changes.’

We also have a guide on how to enable/disable XML Sitemaps here: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/enable-xml-sitemaps-in-the-wordpress-seo-plugin/

As for your question about how to manually remove the post from the sitemap, you can use the wpseo_exclude_from_sitemap_by_post_ids filter to exclude posts from the sitemap by their Ids. The filter would need to be placed in your functions.php file. If you are uncertain where your functions.php file is or how to edit it, please contact your theme developer for additional assistance.

Below is an example use of the filter, where the post IDs to be excluded are 1 and 17:

add_filter( 'wpseo_exclude_from_sitemap_by_post_ids', function () {
  return array( 1, 17 );
} );

Hi @favevory ,

We’re closing this thread as there seem no further questions from you. Please feel free to open a new thread should you have further concerns.