How to Exclude Post Types from the Sitemap

Want to keep certain content, like a specific post type or category, out of your XML sitemap? Here’s how it works in SureRank, and how to check if something you’ve excluded still seems to show up.

Two Different Ways to Keep Content Out of Your Sitemap

There are two separate tools for this, and it’s easy to mix them up:

If you’re on the free version of SureRank, there isn’t a dedicated “exclude from sitemap” option. SureRank’s free sitemap settings only include a switch to turn the sitemap on/off and a switch for including images. The only way to leave a whole post type out of your sitemap in the free version is to set it to noindex, which will also stop search engines from indexing it. If you want it out of the sitemap while still keeping it indexable, that requires SureRank Pro.

If you’re on SureRank Pro: go to SureRank → General → Sitemap → XML tab, where you’ll find Exclude Post Type and Exclude Taxonomy fields.

How to Exclude a Post Type (Pro)

1. Go to SureRank → General → Sitemap → XML tab.
2. Under Exclude Post Type, select the post type(s) you want to leave out of your sitemap.
3. Under Exclude Taxonomy, do the same for any category/tag-style taxonomies.
4. Click Save.

You don’t need to touch your permalinks or do anything else. The change takes effect for your sitemap generation.

Important: Excluding From the Sitemap Doesn’t Hide Content From Google

This is worth understanding clearly: excluding a post type from your sitemap only removes it from the sitemap file. It does not:

• Add a “noindex” tag to those pages
• Stop Google from finding and indexing them through internal links, external links, or a previous crawl
• Remove pages Google has already indexed

If your real goal is “don’t let Google index this content at all,” you need the no-index setting instead (or in addition), found in your Robots settings or on the individual post.

Why a Post Type Keeps Showing as “Selected” Even After You Uncheck It

If you keep removing a post type from Exclude Post Type and it reappears as checked the next time you open the page, this is expected, not a glitch. This field also displays any post type that’s set to “no-index” elsewhere on your site, since those are excluded from the sitemap regardless of this setting. You can’t uncheck those out of this field specifically.

To fix: if you want that post type back in your sitemap, go remove its “no-index” setting first (in your Robots settings), rather than trying to uncheck it here.

Why an Excluded Post Type Still Appears in Your Live Sitemap

If you’ve excluded a post type and saved your settings, but it’s still showing up when you check your actual sitemap file, try these two things:

Clear your caching plugin or CDN cache. If you use a caching plugin (like WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache) or a CDN, it may be serving an older, cached version of your sitemap file even after SureRank has updated it. Purge your cache (specifically for your sitemap URL, if your caching tool allows targeting one URL) and check again in a private browser window.

Still seeing the excluded content in your sitemap after trying both of the above? Contact SureRank support and let us know your sitemap URL and which post type you excluded.