Exclude Folder from sitemap

Hi @bobjgarrett ,

Thanks for reaching out!

The AIOSEO sitemap only lists your WordPress content (posts, pages, and so on). It doesn’t scan folders on your server, so if your download folder contains actual files like PDFs or ZIPs, those are never added to the sitemap in the first place and there’s nothing you need to exclude.

If what you’re seeing in the sitemap are WordPress pages or posts that live under that /download/ URL, you can exclude them like this:

1. Go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps and make sure you’re on the General Sitemap tab.
2. Scroll down to Advanced Settings and turn the toggle on.
3. In the Exclude Posts / Pages field, start typing the title of each item you want to remove and select it from the list.
4. Save your changes.

You can find the full guide here: https://aioseo.com/docs/how-to-exclude-content-from-your-xml-sitemap/

One extra tip: if your goal is to stop search engines from crawling the files in that folder altogether, the sitemap isn’t the right tool for that. Instead, you can add a Disallow rule for the folder under Tools » Robots.txt Editor.

If you can tell us a bit more about what’s in that download folder (actual files, or pages links on your site?), we can point you to the exact option.

Thanks!