Features

SEO Plugin Integrations

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A sitemap should only list URLs you want indexed. When an SEO plugin marks a taxonomy, a term or a post type noindex, listing those URLs in the sitemap sends Google two opposite instructions, and Search Console reports “Submitted URL marked noindex”. Super Speedy Sitemaps reads the indexing decisions of The SEO Framework and Super Speedy Filters and keeps those URLs out automatically.

Available since 1.11.6.

The SEO Framework

With The SEO Framework 5.0 or later active, Super Speedy Sitemaps follows its robots settings:

  • Post types that The SEO Framework sets to noindex, or disables entirely, get no sitemap.
  • Taxonomies that The SEO Framework sets to noindex get no sitemap.
  • Individual terms are checked against The SEO Framework’s own sitemap verdict, which includes per-term robots settings, inheritance from the taxonomy and canonical URLs pointing elsewhere. A term that fails is left out of its taxonomy sitemap.

Super Speedy Sitemaps only reads these settings. It never changes anything in The SEO Framework.

Super Speedy Filters

Super Speedy Filters decides which taxonomy and term pages on a WooCommerce store deserve indexing, using stock, minimum product counts and the indexable taxonomy and term limits you set there. Super Speedy Sitemaps uses that decision directly:

  • A taxonomy outside Super Speedy Filters’ indexable taxonomy or term limits gets no sitemap.
  • For the taxonomies Super Speedy Filters manages, its completed sitemap build is the list of eligible terms, so the taxonomy sitemap contains exactly the terms Super Speedy Filters considers indexable.
  • Super Speedy Filters’ own generated sitemap parts (/ssf-sitemap-1.xml and so on) are listed in your sitemap index automatically. The XML Sitemaps tab names them under Automatically included sitemap parts. They do not need to be submitted to Search Console separately.
Why this matters

Running both plugins means the filter pages Super Speedy Filters makes indexable and the URLs your sitemap advertises always agree. A separate sitemap plugin has no way to know Super Speedy Filters’ rules, so the two would disagree about the same URL.

Greyed-out checkboxes

When one of these plugins controls a post type or taxonomy, its checkbox on the XML Sitemaps tab is greyed out, with a help icon beside it. The icon shows which plugin is in charge, why (for example “This taxonomy is set to noindex by The SEO Framework.”), and a link to the setting that decides it.

Saving the Sitemaps settings while a checkbox is greyed out keeps your own choice for that item. If the other plugin later allows it again, your original setting comes back.

To change what is included, change the setting in the controlling plugin, not in Sitemaps.

The cache stays in step

The sitemap cache is flushed automatically when:

  • The SEO Framework’s settings change,
  • a term’s robots settings in The SEO Framework are added, changed or removed,
  • Super Speedy Filters’ settings change, or
  • Super Speedy Filters finishes rebuilding its sitemap.

A URL that has just been made noindex therefore disappears from the next sitemap request without a manual flush. A page cache or CDN in front of the site can still hold an old copy; purge the sitemap URLs there if needed.

Other SEO plugins

Yoast SEO, Rank Math, SEOPress and All in One SEO are not read. Their noindex settings are not applied to this plugin’s sitemaps, so exclude those items on the XML Sitemaps tab under Exclude items. See Choosing What Goes in Your Sitemaps. Running Alongside Other Sitemap Generators covers switching off their own sitemaps.

Developers of other plugins can publish an equally explicit decision through three filters. See Developer Reference.

Further reading

Make one sitemap authoritative.
Exclusions for everything else.
The indexability filters.

Written for Super Speedy Sitemaps 1.11.17.

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