Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math, and sorry for any inconvenience caused.
1. You should delete the XML sitemap, you can have the HTML sitemap along with the XML sitemap generated by Rank Math.
2. No, the sitemap URL does not affect the SEO, you need to make sure that you add the correct sitemap URL(sitemap_index.xml) in the Search Console.
3. Rank Math does not have an option to generate an HTML sitemap, you can use the current HTML sitemap that is present on your website.
4. As you are using the NGINX server, if the Rank Math sitemaps are not working properly, you need to add the following code to your configuration file.
# START Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps
rewrite ^/sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;
# END Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps
If you are not sure, you can ask your web host to add these rewrite rules.
Looking forward to helping you.
Regarding the 4, we already add that code to our configuration file. Today I OFF “Companion Sitemap Generator” Plugin and now ON Rank Math sitemap, then submit Rank Math http://www.lisungroup.com/sitemap_index.xml to google, after about 1hour, we found following errors showed in https://search.google.com/search-console/sitemaps:
1. Rank Math sitemap index url and much less than the previous, why? please see here: https://ibb.co/Xz9kr1s
2. Rank Math sitemap has showed errors: https://ibb.co/BZsc3Nf. There are two types errors:
2.1 News errors: https://ibb.co/cgmcJVM
2.2 Other errors: https://ibb.co/wM898KT
3. I want to ask, if I want to use the news sitemap and video sitemaps, do I must use Rank Math schema? I present use “Schema & Structured Data” Plugin for news, video and other schema markup.
Due to the Rank Math Sitemap has a lot of errors, I have already OFF it and re-ON “Companion Sitemap Generator” Plugin. If you want to check the above errors, you can on Rank Math sitemap, but after you checked, please off it and on “Companion Sitemap Generator” again.
Could you please urgent to solve this issue?
Reply
Hello,
1. Please ensure that your sitemap is excluded from caching completely. You may follow these steps:
1.1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
1.2. 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/
1.3. Apply this filter code into your theme’s functions.php file to completely remove Rank Math’s sitemap file from caching.
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
2. After following the steps above, these errors should also be addressed and resolved.
3. Rank Math does offer the same functionality which generates a News Sitemap and video sitemap. If you prefer using Rank Math’s sitemap you may deactivate that plugin and allow Rank Math to generate the sitemaps.
After following the steps above, remove all your sitemaps from your GSC and resubmit only the primary sitemap (sitemap_index.xml).
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Could you please urgent to solve this issue?
Thanks. I will do as the steps you showed me 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3. I will feedback you if have some problems.
Regarding to 3, I can’t deactivate the “Schema & Structured Data” plugin as I already used for it some months and google already index. I used “Schema & Structured Data” plugin to do the videos and news schema, I am asking can I use Rank Math to generator the video and news sitmaps? I don’t know videos/news schema whether has some related with videos/news sitemaps.
Urgently: The sitemap still can’t work. Please help do in our site with ID and password to fix imeddiately. Thanks. This is very important.
Please treat this to be very urgent as it will effected our SEO. The above two news sitemaps have problems (please see in the sensitive data), I already did in your 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, it still have problems.
Please treat this to be very urgent as it will effected our SEO. The above two news sitemaps have problems (please see in the sensitive data), I already did in your 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3, it still have problems.
Any update? It is very urgent
Reply
Hello,
We’re really sorry for the delayed response.
I was able to replicate that the News sitemap is not showing the links on the front end. Though the links are present in the sitemap’s source.
I logged into your website’s admin area and upon investigating, I found that you have a separate post type named “news” (display name as “News Center”). This is the post type under which the news articles are created.
The issue here is that the URL of the sitemap of this post type is /news-sitemap.xml and as you’ve also enabled the News Sitemap of Rank Math, the URL of the News Sitemap is also /news-sitemap.xml, and thus a conflict is created.
If the News Sitemap of Rank Math is disabled, the sitemap of “news” post type loads properly. You can have a look at the screencast in the sensitive data section of this ticket.
However, in your case, this would not work the other way around, i.e, disable “news” post type sitemap and enable News sitemap of Rank Math. No URLs would be listed in the sitemap as disabling the “news” post type sitemap would also disable the URLs for the News sitemap since both have the same URL.
If you want to use Rank Math’s News Sitemap, then you can slightly modify the name/slug of “news” post type and this should fix the issue. You may test this in a staging website first and if everything seems fine, you can use it in the live website.
Please note that changing the slug of the post type can affect the rankings of that post type on the SERPs.
Hope this helps clearify the situation.
Thank you.
Of course we must use news sitemaps, but I can’t modify the name/slug of “news” post type as it will effect our SEO. Could you please give solution in your side? Thanks!
another issue: in my https://search.google.com/search-console/sitemaps/, there still have only less URL than original: https://imgbb.com/Xz9kr1s
Now there is only this errors: https://imgbb.com/wM898KT
I submit the sitemaps yesterday.
Reply
Hello,
Unfortunately, we can’t change the name of our sitemaps and if you would like to use our News Sitemap feature you would need to have the post type on your website with a slightly different name.
You should only submit the main sitemap as is indicated in our tutorial here: https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/
Please remove all sitemaps from GSC and only include the main as per our instructions.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
I still have two issues for the sitemaps:
1. Video Sitemap
1.1. Please see our video sitemaps, I must do hande to add Video schema template, then can added in to the video sitemap? Do we have some automatic ways?
1.2. In our single product of real site, you will see there are two schema: one is “Schema in Use” and other is “Global Templates in Use”. It seems that I must add in “Schema in Use” then can added into the video sitemaps. How can I don’t display “Global Templates in Use”?
2. News Sitemap
Please must think some solution to solve let me generate news sitemaps, the solution must don’t effect our SEO. Thanks!
Hello, please ignore 1.2 as I already know where is the problem, but only answer 1.1 and 2 for me, thanks!
Reply
Hello,
1.1 – If the videos from your posts or pages are inside the actual post content you can use the following tutorial to regenerate the Video Schema retroactively: https://rankmath.com/kb/add-video-schema-to-existing-posts/
2 – Our dev team is already aware of the situation and we are going to explore options to solve this in the future, but at the moment the only workaround is the one mentioned above to change the CPT slug slightly.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Do you have some ETA to solve the news sitemap?
The sitemaps were ok in 16th Feb. But due to real site problem and we recovery 10th Feb backup, the sitemaps have problems, please see the two questions in the sensitive data and answer, thanks!
Reply
Hello,
We still don’t have an ETA but our dev team has already added this to the repository of the plugin to improve this situation in the future for users like yourself that use a CPT called “News”.
Regarding the sitemaps, it seems that currently, they are returning a 404 error.
Please follow these steps to regenerate the sitemap and update the links:
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. Clear your website’s cache and browser’s cache.
Hope this helps solve your issues.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
I enable the sitemaps but didn’t enable the news-sitemap/video-sitemap/schema at present.
I already do as your above 3 steps, also disable the previous sitemap plugin and change previous sitemap plugin in FTP root to sitemap20220219.xml. And I submit the sitemap_index.xml to https://search.google.com/search-console/sitemaps to index. Let’s see whether have some problems tomorrow.
But until now, there are some pages can’t detect the image in the sitemap. Please see the sensitive data. Kindly solve for me, thanks!
Regarding to the sitemap, there is another two questions:
1. How can we make the xml sitemap .xml file into FTP root file? It said that if has a .xml file in that file will be good for google index.
2. Our previous sitemap is http://www.ourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, I will delete this .xml in our FTP later, do we need to make a 301 forward from /sitemap.xml to Rank Math’s /sitemap_index.xml?
Reply
Hello,
Our plugin doesn’t generate a physical file in the root of your website for your sitemap, we dynamically generate those when the page is loaded.
This is perfectly acceptable and it’s how most SEO plugins do it these days so it’s easier to get updated automatically.
Regarding the redirection, this is usually handled by Rank Math provided that you have the correct redirection code in the server configuration file as illustrated below.
Apache: https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-sitemap-issues/#apache-error
Nginx: https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-sitemap-issues/#nginx-server-error
You need to apply the redirections on your server depending on the technology you are using, either Apache or Nginx.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Reply
Hello,
In this case, please make sure that you remove the file called sitemap.xml from the root of your website so that the redirections from Rank Math can be applied to that URL.
You should also remove any other plugins that you might have installed to generate the sitemap.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
