Delete old sitemap that refuses to update

  • Resolved Frodo

    (@imsosickandtiredofhavingtoregi)


    4 years, 8 months ago

    Hello, I’m trying to remove an old sitemap that won’t update and hasn’t done for over a year. It’s called /slide-page-sitemap.xml last updated 2018-05-06 22:27 +10:00.

    As it hasn’t updated for so long, it’s completely out of date and Google is now flagging the content which no longer exists. I understand that sitempas are generated as a site is updated, but given that this has been sitting untouched for so long and there have been many slides since (not on this sitemap when they probably should be), would there be a file somewhere that can be deleted that would just delete the offending sitemap too, or something else that would get rid of it?

    I’ve disabled slider sitemaps in the yoast options but this has made no difference. I disabled author archives at the same time and this worked successfully.

    Otherwise, with SEO in mind, what would be the best solution?

    Thanks for your help.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support amboutwe

    (@amboutwe)

    4 years, 7 months ago

    Disabling the sitemap in the Yoast SEO settings will prevent the plugin from creating the sitemap as you experienced with the author archives. As the same did not happen for the slider sitemap, this typically means that the sitemap is cached or a physical file was saved to your server.

    Using FTP or a file manager, please check your server for a physical file called slide-page-sitemap.xml and rename it to slide-page-sitemap.old. If this resolves the issue, you can delete the renamed file as you no longer need it.

    Thread Starter Frodo

    (@imsosickandtiredofhavingtoregi)

    4 years, 7 months ago

    Hello and thank you for replying, I really appreciate that.

    The sitemaps are excluded from caching and I did try to find files named as you’ve said via the file manager, but there weren’t any at all.

    I asked the hosting provider for assistance, they didn’t think it was possible for a yoast sitemap file to be on the server.

    Basically, the only way to solve the problem seemed to be to uninstall yoast and then reinstall – which I did and that worked. I left a bit of time in between the uninstall and reinstall to make sure.

    Hopefully this might help someone else who comes up against the same problem – it was quite strange and rather frustrating but is now fixed.

    Pcosta88

    (@pcosta88)

    4 years, 7 months ago

    Hi,

    While we are not sure exactly how the issue got resolved we are glad it is. As the issue is now resolved, we will close this topic in order to keep the overview.

    If you run into any other issues feel free to create a new topic!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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