Noindexed URLs in the sitemap: one page, two opposite instructions
A sitemap lists the URLs you want indexed, so a noindexed page in it is a contradiction. Google obeys the noindex and reports the URL as excluded. For each affected URL, decide which instruction is wrong: remove the noindex if the page should rank, or drop it from the sitemap if not.
Older versions of Search Console labelled this "Submitted URL marked 'noindex'". The current Page indexing report shows it as "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" once you filter to submitted pages.
Find the URLs
- Open Indexing → Pages in Search Console.
- Change the filter at the top from All known pages to All submitted pages. The report now covers only URLs from your sitemaps.
- Under "Why pages aren't indexed", open Excluded by 'noindex' tag. Every URL listed is both in a sitemap and noindexed.
- Export the list.
You can also check from the sitemap side. Fetch a child sitemap, pick a suspicious URL, and look for the directive in both places it can live:
curl -s https://example.com/thank-you/ | grep -i 'name="robots"'
curl -sI https://example.com/thank-you/ | grep -i x-robots-tag
Why the two disagree
On WordPress the sitemap and the robots tag are often produced by different pieces of software, or by the same software at different times.
- Two sources of truth. The sitemap comes from WordPress core or one plugin while
noindexis set by another plugin, the theme or a server header. The sitemap generator has no idea the page is excluded. WordPress core's own sitemap, for example, knows nothing about per-post noindex settings stored by plugins. - A static sitemap file. A
sitemap.xmlgenerated once by a desktop tool or an old plugin and left in the site root. It never updates. - A cached sitemap. The page was noindexed after the sitemap was cached by a CDN.
- Noindex applied outside the usual setting. An
X-Robots-Tagheader from the server, or a snippet infunctions.php, that the sitemap generator cannot see.
Hydrogen SEO builds both from the same settings: content set to noindex, whether per post or for a whole post type or taxonomy, is left out of its sitemap, and the sitemap cache is cleared when those settings change. If you use it and still see this, look at the last three causes. A type that is noindexed shows a NoIndex badge on the Hydrogen SEO → Sitemap screen.
Decide, URL by URL
The page should be indexed. The noindex is the mistake. Remove it at its source: the per-post No Index switch in the SEO Settings sheet, the type-level setting under Hydrogen SEO → Robots, or the server header. Page set to noindex lists the places WordPress sites pick up an unintended noindex. Then request indexing.
The page should not be indexed. The sitemap entry is the mistake. Remove the URL from the sitemap, or fix the generator so it respects the setting. Thank-you pages, cart and account pages, internal search and thin archives belong here.
There is one deliberate exception. When you have just noindexed a large batch of pages and want them dropped quickly, leaving them in a sitemap for a while encourages Google to recrawl them and see the tag. Treat that as temporary and remove them afterwards.
Why bother fixing it
Google does not penalise the contradiction. The costs are practical. Crawl requests go to URLs that can never be indexed. The submitted-versus-indexed numbers in Search Console stop being a useful health measure, because the gap is padded with pages that were never meant to be indexed. And when a page that should rank is among them, the report is the only place you will notice.
Confirm the cleanup
Open the sitemap and search for a URL you removed; it should be gone. If it is still listed, purge the CDN and page cache, and check whether a second sitemap is being served from another address. Paste the file into our XML sitemap validator to confirm it is still valid after edits. In Search Console, resubmit the sitemap, then watch the submitted-pages view of "Excluded by 'noindex' tag" shrink over the following weeks.
Common questions
Will Google index a noindexed page because it is in my sitemap?
No. Noindex wins. A sitemap is a hint about which URLs to crawl; noindex is a directive about what may be shown.
Does this waste crawl budget?
A little. On small sites it does not matter. On large sites with many thousands of such URLs it is worth cleaning up.
Should noindexed pages ever be in a sitemap?
Only temporarily, to get a batch of newly noindexed pages recrawled faster. Remove them once they have dropped out.
I removed the URL from the sitemap. Why is it still in the report?
The report updates as Google re-reads the sitemap and recrawls the page. Old entries can linger for a few weeks.