How to exclude content from the sitemap

Posts and pages can be assigned to multiple taxonomies and can unexpectedly show up in your sitemap when you thought they would be hidden. You can exclude individual posts or pages from the sitemap inside the meta box in both Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium, or exclude certain content types by customizing the sitemap index. In this article, we explain how you can exclude content from the sitemap.

To exclude posts from the sitemap, follow the steps below.

  1. In your WordPress Dashboard, go to your Posts or Pages

  2. Edit the post or page

  3. In the Yoast SEO sidebar, go to Advanced


  4. Under Allow search engines to show this Post in search results?, choose No

  5. Publish or update the post or page

Use a filter to bulk exclude posts or pages

You or your developer can also use a filter to bulk exclude posts or pages from the Yoast SEO sitemap. The filter would be placed in your functions.php file. If you’re not sure where that is, please contact your theme developer. As a best practice, we recommend making a backup prior to editing theme files. 

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