How to Fix Incorrect Pages Found in Sitemap XML?
Admin ~ February 12, 2025 ~ 5 Minutes Reading
Have you ever encountered the error incorrect pages found in sitemap XML? Do you want to fix it? Since these faulty pages in your sitemap may negatively impact site indexing and rankings. If yes, then this digital blog will help you to quickly fix your issues both using free & professional solutions.
What are Incorrect Pages in Sitemap XML?
Pages like non-canonical pages, 4xx pages, and redirected pages, should not be included in the sitemap. These might harm site indexing. Let us start with how to fix incorrect pages and non-canonical pages in the sitemap. However, before starting the methods it is important to types of pages not need to be present in the sitemap XML file.
Common Incorrect Pages Found in Sitemap XML
Non-Canonical Pages: These pages are different versions of your existing pages but do not opt for canonical versions. If these pages are present in your sitemap search engines might index the wrong URL or split link equity between the different variations of the page. Results to harm in SEO performance.
Noindex Pages: Pages with meta no-index robots tag instruct search engines not to index these pages. If any no index page is present in your sitemap it might create confusion and waste the crawl budget. Generally, these errors result in lesser crawl efficiency.
4xx Pages: If pages with 4xx status codes are present in your sitemap XML file. The search engine bots will not index such pages. Moreover, these pages waste the crawl budget of bots to index to your other important pages.
Redirected Pages: URLs that 301 and 302 redirected should not be in the sitemap XML file. Since search engines only prefer to index directly, not with redirection. If your sitemap XML has redirected pages, it may cause indexing issues.
Duplicate Pages: Pages with similar or somehow similar content should not be present in the sitemap. These pages affect SEO value and create confusion for search engines about which page to index and rank.
Blocked Pages: In many cases, we block some type of page directly from the robots.txt file. If any page is already blocked & is present in the sitemap. Search engines will not be able to index such pages and waste crawl budget.
How to Fix Incorrect Pages Found in Sitemap XML File? Direct Way
- Initially, identify the incorrect pages in your sitemap based on types as discussed above.
- Now, back up your sitemap.xml file on your local desktop & open it with code editor.
- After that, remove identified incorrect pages from the sitemap.
- Remember you need to remove the entire URL block in which an incorrect page is present.
- Next, save the edited sitemap.xml file and overwrite it with the sitemap.xml file present on your hosting server.
- Finally, go to Google Search Console under Indexing>> Sitemaps section and submit the updated sitemap.xml file.
Limitations of the Direct Approach
- It is a very labor-intensive task to manually find incorrect pages on a website. Especially for large websites it requires much manual effort to identify such pages and fix them.
- Another disadvantage of using the direct approach to fix incorrect pages found in sitemap XML is that it is a very time-consuming task. It may hinder your overall work productivity.
- Probably there are higher chance that some faulty pages in the sitemap can remain undetected. Therefore, this approach is not recommended at all, especially for large websites.
Professional Way to Solve Incorrect Pages Found in Sitemap XML
If you are looking for a proficient solution that can automatically find and fix incorrect pages found in sitemap XML. In such instances, you may use the Sitemap Buddy Sitemap Builder Tool. This is the modern utility that is developed after deep research and understanding of user problems. Moreover, this utility offers advanced settings like the use of robots.txt, directly remove pages from sitemap, exclude attachments from sitemap, etc. Now, let us understand how this expert utility will resolve your problem with detailed working steps.
How to Find & Fix Incorrect Pages Found in Sitemap XML?
- Initially, install and run the expert utility on your local system.
- Now, enter the URL of your website in the site link bar.
- After that, go to the settings and enable robots.txt option.
- Next, enter the URLs that need to be excluded from the sitemap.
- Thereafter, click on the Crawl button and wait for the sitemap pages to gather.
- Then, review the sitemap pages and export them as a sitemap.xml file on your PC.
- Finally, overwrite the new sitemap with the existing one and submit it in GSC.
To Wrap Up
To conclude the above blog is on the topic of how to fix incorrect pages found in sitemap XML. We have started our discussion by understanding what incorrect pages mean and their common types. Secondly, we have seen the direct approach to solving the faulty pages found in sitemap XML. However, the manual way has some limitations like time-consuming, labor-intensive, risk of human errors, etc. Finally, we have seen the professional way to automatically find and solve incorrect page-found sitemap XML with a detailed step-by-step guide.
