mvkat

From the time I posted the above, I have since found the correct solution with help from Gemini AI.

1. The “Single Switch” Fix in Yoast

To “noindex” all /category/ archives (whether they contain posts or your autogenerated pages) without using robots.txt:

1. In your WordPress sidebar, go to Yoast SEO > Settings.
2. On the left menu, click Categories & Tags.
3. Click on the Categories section to expand it.
4. Look for the toggle labeled “Show categories in search results?”
5. Set this to Off.
6. Scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.

What this does: This adds the <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow"> tag to every category archive page automatically. Google will still be able to crawl the links on those pages (so your mobile usability and internal linking stay healthy), but the pages themselves will disappear from search results.

That is correct. Toggling that setting off will not break, delete, or change the taxonomies (the categories and tags) associated with your individual pages.

Here is exactly what stays the same and what changes:What remains UNCHANGED

• Data Integrity: The categories you have assigned to your pages in the WordPress backend will remain exactly as they are.
• Plugin Functionality: The “Pages with category and tag” plugin will continue to function. You can still assign categories to pages and use them for filtering or organization within your site.
• Internal Links: If you have links on your site that point to these category pages, they will still work for human visitors.
• Mobile Usability: Since the pages still exist and are “crawlable” (just not “indexable”), Google can still follow the links to see how your site is structured, which protects your usability scores.

What CHANGES

• The Search Result: The only thing that changes is that Google is told: “You can look at this /category/ page, but please do not show it in Search results.”
• The Meta Tag: Yoast will simply insert a small piece of code into the header of those specific category archive pages: <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow">.

One Quick Check in Yoast

Since you just toggled that setting, it’s worth double-checking your XML Sitemap.

Yoast is usually very smart about this—when you tell it not to show categories in search results, it should automatically remove the category-sitemap.xml from your main sitemap index.

• To verify: Go to [yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml](https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml).
• Check if the “category” sitemap is still listed.
• If it’s gone: You’re in perfect shape.