How To Hide Category Pages From Sitemap

Hi Tim,

My sy-sitemap.xml shows a number of "empty" links. These are category sections that only contain password-protected galleries.

For example:
https://subphoto.ca/client_galleries/uofc_grad_gallery/

Unfortunately this also applies to 'inactive' subcategories. I wouldn't want customers to find pages like that if they were searching for "uofc grad" -- is there a way to keep these from appearing on the sitemap?

Edited Sat Jan 08, 22 10:55 AM by Michael Leenheer

Followup: There are also empty tag links in the sitemap.

https://subphoto.ca/tags/union/

How could I remove these?

Edited by

There is not an option to not add the categories to the sitemap.

For the tag, Site Content then underneath the left menu click the tag then delete.

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Well then I don't know what's happening Tim, could I be confusing the words you use for parts of the site? Everything I thought was a 'category' is listed on my sitemap including the password-protected ones.

https://subphoto.ca/sy-sitemap.xml

Maybe the word you use is "Sections" - if I click 'SITE CONTENT' in the menu they are all the page categories listed on the left.

For example, I don't want my 'Greeting Cards' store section https://subphoto.ca/greeting_cards/ or any of the 'Store' content https://subphoto.ca/store/ to show up on the sitemap because I only want people to find those products in the shopping cart. The 'Questions & Answers' section https://subphoto.ca/questions/ is password-protected because we are testing a new idea but now Google is trying to index it. All of these are on the sitemap.

Not sure what the best solution is. Manually deleting the file and uploading my own? Or will it just get overwritten every time I make a change inside Sytist?

Edited by

Also how often does the sitemap refresh? The tags I deleted are still in the sitemap afterwards, I've tried editing a page or two and saving it to see if the map refreshes. How long should I wait?

Edited by

As with most of Sytist, the sitemap seems to have a lot of limitations. Sorry you can not eliminate the categories.

The new sitemap is generated whenever a page is saved.

I assume you have submitted the sitemap to google and bing as that is the only time it is used.

You will be better off just creating your own sitemap with what you want submitted to google though they will find all those pages on their own anyways.

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