• Resolved mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)


    Hi,

    I generated a sitemap using the Jetpack plugin and submitted it to Google via Google Search Console. My site has even started getting indexed with 7 pages and 1 post indexed so far. I noticed something very strange in the Image Sitemap, which is, it is also displaying sample/demo images from the sample/demo posts of the theme that I use and that’s when I have deleted those sample/demo posts. Since the posts have been deleted, the images associated with them should not appear in the Image Sitemap. Please note here that the Image Sitemap is showing “__trashed” (that seems double underscore; without quotes) written as part and at the end of the URLs of all deleted posts in the Page URL column.

    A work around that comes to mind is delete all unused photos from the Media Library in my WordPress site, but this just does not sound like a solution, or does it?

    I really like your sitemap generator and find that it’s much better and easy to understand and use than other, big sitemap generators. I hope there is a solution and I could continue using the sitemap generated by JetPack.

    Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Plugin Support supernovia

    (@supernovia)

    Hi, would you be willing to share the site name so we can see what you’re seeing? And to confirm, these are not-deleted images that were used on posts that are deleted, correct?

    Plugin Support supernovia

    (@supernovia)

    Also just as one more detail: are those posts still in the trash, or are they fully deleted now?

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Hi, thanks for your response. I am currently unable to share the site name/link.
    I’m sorry I didn’t get “these are not-deleted images that were used on posts that are deleted”. Specifically, what do you mean by “not-deleted images”?

    Yes, they are still in the trash. I never deleted them from the trash. Is it a known thing that if not deleted from trash, the content will continue to show up in sitemaps?

    Plugin Support supernovia

    (@supernovia)

    I’m sorry I didn’t get “these are not-deleted images that were used on posts that are deleted”. Specifically, what do you mean by “not-deleted images”?

    I mean to ask, are the images in the trash, too, or just the posts?

    And, I haven’t seen this before, so it’s not really a known thing. But I can try to duplicate what you’re seeing if I have enough details.

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Thank you for working with me on this. I really appreciate it.

    No, the images are not in the trash. They are still in the media library. I just deleted the posts, which are in the trash.

    Do you think I should try deleting the images from the media library first to see if the problem gets resolved and if it doesn’t, then try to empty trash and see if that works?

    Plugin Contributor James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    Yes, the Image Sitemap pulls all images from your Media Library, so you’ll need to delete the images from your Media Library before they’ll be removed from the Image Sitemap.

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Thanks for your reply. It’s good to receive a response on this directly from a plugin contributor. Thank you. I will do as you advise.

    A secondary question: Is it the normal behavior of all image sitemaps (generated by all sitemap generators) to pull images from WordPress’s media library whether those images are used in a post/on a page or not? I was on a Google support forum and asked the same question. The Gold Support guy there raised the “attachment URL” thing, suggesting me to not opt for deleting images from the media library, but instead use Yoast plugin’s sub-plugin, Search Index Purge, to redirect the image links to 404, or it can come to “bite” me later. I was just concerned and decided to ask you guys directly because I wanted to keep using JetPack’s sitemaps without using any additional plugin to handle any aspect of the sitemap.

    Plugin Support KokkieH

    (@kokkieh)

    Is it the normal behavior of all image sitemaps (generated by all sitemap generators) to pull images from WordPress’s media library whether those images are used in a post/on a page or not?

    I’m not able to comment on how other sitemap generators work in this regard as I don’t know. This is how Jetpack’s sitemaps are designed to work. Authors of other plugins that create sitemaps might choose to have theirs work in a different way.

    In what way does the Google community member think this can come back to bite you? Do they reckon it’s harmful for your SEO (which I can’t think how, as redirecting the image URL to a 404 page is essentially the same thing as will happen if you just delete the images)? Or are they concerned that you might want to use those images again in future? If it’s the latter, just make sure you have a copy of those images on your computer’s hard drive, or in a site backup that will be kept, as there’s no way to restore them otherwise once you delete them from the media library.

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Hi,

    Thanks for your response and the clarification.

    What they Google community member pointed out to me was, with every image upload on WordPress, there is a page created and deleting the image doesn’t delete that page, including the link to the page, so after deleting an image from media library, the page that remains, including its link, offers nothing – the more images deleted manually increase the number of such empty pages on the site – which is bad SEO-wise if the links to those empty pages are not redirected to 404 for Google crawlers.

    What the gentleman from Google was saying didn’t make sense to me either. They were never answering any question of mine about accessing the images later. What and how you explain above makes perfect sense to me, so I am going to do as you and James above advise. Thank you all for all the helpful responses. I really appreciate the replies.

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Update:

    So I deleted one image from my media library to see if it goes away. Although in the image sitemap, the image is gone, there is this no-file icon showing up in place of the gone thumbnail, and the no-file icon is clickable with the link to the image (clicking on which takes to a page on my site that says “Oops! That page can’t be found. It looks like nothing was found at this location. Try the search below” and then there is the search box of my site (there is no 404 or any other numbered error mentioned on the page, which has my site’s logo, categories and advertising boxes showing up just like and in the same places where they are visible on a working page of my site). Again, in the image sitemap, the Page URL and Image URL columns of the deleted image’s entry still show the links the image was associated with i.e. the Page URL column still shows link to the deleted demo post with “__trashed” at the end of the url and the Image URL column shows the link of the deleted image.

    I also deleted the post of the image from trash to see if the entire entry goes away from the sitemap. but it did not.

    Is this normal or the entire entry should have been gone from the image sitemap? (Or maybe it takes some days for the image sitemap to update itself and then the entire entry will be gone?).

    • This reply was modified 4 years, 12 months ago by mynewprojectnews. Reason: Edit for clarification
    Plugin Contributor James Huff

    (@macmanx)

    What they Google community member pointed out to me was, with every image upload on WordPress, there is a page created and deleting the image doesn’t delete that page, including the link to the page, so after deleting an image from media library, the page that remains

    Yeah, they’re definitely wrong about that. Deleting the image definitely deletes its attachment page. ??

    (Or maybe it takes some days for the image sitemap to update itself and then the entire entry will be gone?)

    Yep, that’s it, but it’s more like a matter of hours than days, usually no more than 24 hours. ??

    Thread Starter mynewprojectnews

    (@mynewprojectnews)

    Awesome! Thanks!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
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