Managing Yoast SEO Sitemaps on Multilingual WordPress Sites
On a multilingual WordPress site, Yoast SEO creates XML sitemaps that show search engines which site URLs it includes for discovery. An…
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How Yoast SEO Sitemap Settings Affect Archive Pages
In WordPress, an archive page groups related content, such as posts in a category, posts by an author, or posts published on a particular date. Yoast SEO settings control whether these pages should appear in search results and whether Yoast includes them in its XML sitemap, a file that helps search engines discover URLs.
An archive can still load when it is missing from the sitemap, and a search engine is not guaranteed to add a sitemap URL to its search results. The settings also differ by archive type, so check the relevant archive control and the site’s live sitemap before concluding what changed.
Which Yoast setting controls each archive
The documented settings begin at WordPress Dashboard → Yoast SEO → Settings. The menu path depends on the type of archive or content:
| Archive or content | Settings path | Sitemap effect |
|---|---|---|
| Categories, tags, and other taxonomies | Categories & Tags | The show-in-search-results setting controls whether taxonomy archive pages are represented in search and in the sitemap. |
| Author archives | Advanced → Author Archives | Author archive settings control whether the pages are enabled and shown in search. Yoast’s guidance says disabling their search visibility also removes the author sitemap. |
| Date archives | Advanced → Date Archives | Turning off the show-in-search-results setting excludes date archive pages from XML sitemaps. The separate archive enable/disable control is a different setting. |
| Post types, including custom post types | Content types | Showing a post type in search results includes it in the sitemap; removing it from search results removes it from the sitemap. |
Yoast covers customizing the sitemap index, category and tag settings, and date archive settings. The exact interface can vary with the installed plugin version and site configuration.
A site can control whether an archive is available separately from whether it appears in search results. For author pages, turning off Enable author archives makes the archive unavailable, redirects requests to the homepage, and removes the author sitemap. Leaving the archive enabled but turning off Show author archives in search results changes its search visibility and sitemap inclusion. Yoast describes these as distinct controls in its author archive settings.
Taxonomy archives also need to be distinguished from the posts they group. Hiding a category or tag archive does not, by itself, remove the individual posts assigned to that category or tag from the post sitemap. Yoast handles content types and taxonomies as separate sitemap categories. For useful category or tag pages, Yoast recommends keeping them visible in search; date archives have separate guidance because date-based groupings can offer less distinct value.
Verify the index and the archive URL
Yoast’s sitemap index is the top-level XML file that links to the site’s smaller sitemap files. On a typical installation, open https://your-domain.example/sitemap_index.xml using the site’s preferred domain name and URL protocol, such as HTTP or HTTPS. Yoast documents the XML sitemap feature under Yoast SEO → Settings → Site features; enabling Yoast’s feature automatically disables the default WordPress core sitemap, while disabling Yoast’s feature does not disable WordPress’s sitemap. Check which sitemap is active before relying on an endpoint.
Use these checks after changing an archive setting:
- Open the sitemap index in a browser and confirm that it returns XML rather than an error or an HTML page. Yoast recommends checking the index directly when troubleshooting sitemap format issues.
- Read the index to find the child sitemap relevant to the archive type, then open that file and inspect its entries. The index itself shows which child files the site currently publishes. Do not assume a specific child sitemap filename, especially for date archives.
- Visit the archive URL. Check whether it loads, redirects, or returns another response, then compare that behavior with the setting you changed.
- If the XML still shows the old result, check for caching, server rewrites, or other sitemap delivery problems. Yoast lists these among common XML sitemap errors.
Yoast creates sitemap files for eligible content with valid entries, so a site will not always have every possible child sitemap. Its sitemap specification describes the index and file behavior; the live index is the reliable place to see which files this site actually provides.
What to check when archive visibility changes
Check three things separately: whether the archive URL works, whether Yoast is set to show the page in search, and whether the URL appears in the sitemap. A missing sitemap entry alone does not show whether the page redirects or still loads. This distinction matters especially for author archives, which Yoast redirects when the archive feature is disabled.
For a single archive that behaves differently from the broad setting, inspect individual exclusions as well. Yoast provides controls for individual author visibility and sitemap exclusions. Yoast’s sitemap output for custom post types and taxonomies also depends on how developers register them and make them available to Yoast. Developer filters can change which types appear in the sitemap. Check the site’s actual settings and output instead of assuming every custom archive follows the default behavior.
Finally, sitemap inclusion helps search engines discover URLs, but it does not guarantee that they will crawl or index them. Google makes that distinction in its guidance on sitemaps and URL discovery. After changing archive visibility, check internal links and navigation as well as the XML, particularly if the archive URL itself has changed or begun redirecting.
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