Urgent Help Needed – ‘X-Robots-Tag: noindex’ in Sitemap HTTP Header

Hello,

Thank you for reaching out to us with your concern about the ‘X-Robots-Tag: noindex’ issue in your Rank Math SEO plugin-generated sitemap. I understand the urgency of resolving this matter promptly to ensure your website’s SEO performance.

Based on the information provided, it seems you have already taken several troubleshooting steps to address the problem. Since you have ruled out common causes like incorrect settings, conflicts, and server-side configurations, we may need to delve deeper into the issue to identify the root cause.

Given the complexity of the matter, I recommend assigning this ticket to our human support team for further investigation. Please use the available buttons to assign the ticket to a human agent who will thoroughly analyze the screenshots you provided and assist you in resolving the ‘X-Robots-Tag: noindex’ matter affecting your sitemap.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we work to resolve this issue promptly for you.

Best regards.

Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Why Google Hasn’t Indexed Your Post, Page, and/or Website? » Rank Math
Why Isn’t My URL Included in the Sitemap? » Rank Math
How to Fix Submitted URL Marked ‘NoIndex’ Error » Rank Math
Can I NoIndex PDF Files Using an SEO Plugin? » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math support and bringing your inquiry to us.

We understand your concern about the sitemap being set as ‘noindex’, but we assure you that this is how it should be.

The reason is that we don’t want Google to index the sitemap itself, we only want them to index the pages and posts that are listed on the sitemap. The sitemap is just a way to tell Google what pages and posts you have on your website, not a page that you want to show up in search results.

The important thing is that your pages and posts are set to ‘index’, which means that they are eligible to appear in Google search results.

You can check this by looking at the Rank Math settings on each page or post, or by using the Google URL Inspection tool.

To make sure that Google knows about your sitemap and can crawl your pages and posts, you need to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.

This is a simple process that you can follow by using our tutorial: https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/

Hope that helps, and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.

Hello,

Your sitemaps are already validating fine upon checking. You can also validate them using this tool:
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html

In this case, please follow these steps to flush your sitemap cache:

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. Disable the transient cache for the sitemap by applying this filter. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site:

/** 
 * Filter if XML sitemap transient cache is enabled.
 *
 * @param boolean $unsigned Enable cache or not, defaults to true
 */
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

If the issue persists, then you may follow our guide here:
https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/

Looking forward to helping you.