Prevent Search engines from indexing sitemap file

[UNLda]

Hello,

How do we prevent search engines from indexing our XML sitemap file?

Any ideias?

Thanks!

[Amasty]

Hey @UNLda

You can use the following tag to achieve that:

X-Robots-Tag: noindex

[UNLda]

Could we add  <META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex"> on a XML file?

[Benabee]

Hi

I think you can add in robots.txt

Disallow: /sitemap.xml

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6552060/should-sitemap-be-disallowed-in-robots-txt-and-robot-txt-...

Can you tell us why you want to prevent sitemap indexing ? Does it show up in search engine results ?

[steverex981246]

To prevent search engines from indexing your sitemap file, you can use the robots.txt file to disallow it. Here’s how you can do it:

• Update robots.txt File: Add the following line to your robots.txt file:
  
  User-agent: *

Disallow:  /sitemap.xml

This tells search engines not to crawl or index the sitemap file located at /sitemap.xml.

• Noindex HTTP Header (Advanced Option): Some web servers allow you to set a X-Robots-Tag HTTP header on the sitemap file, which instructs search engines not to index it. If you have access to server configurations, you can add:
  
  
  Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"

in your server configuration (e.g., .htaccess for Apache) to prevent indexing.

• Ensure Proper Access Settings: Double-check that the sitemap is accessible to search engines for reading, as disallowing its crawling might prevent them from discovering your site’s content.