## **🔍 Overview**

When you migrate from Yoast to Search Atlas, your previous sitemap exclusion settings are not automatically carried over. If you had author pages, video pages, category pages, or tag pages disabled in Yoast, you will need to re-apply those exclusions directly in Search Atlas. This article explains what to do and what to have ready when contacting support.

## **⚠️ Why This Matters**

Pages that return errors — such as 404s or thin-content pages — should not appear in your sitemap. Including them can signal quality issues to search engines and negatively affect your site's crawl budget. Disabling these URL types in your Search Atlas sitemap keeps it clean and aligned with your SEO strategy.

## **🧭 How to Access Your Sitemap Settings**

1. Log in to your Search Atlas account.
2. Navigate to the project associated with the domain you migrated from Yoast.
3. Look for a sitemap or sitemap configuration area within your project settings. The exact location may vary depending on your account setup — if you cannot locate it, see the escalation steps below.

## **🚫 Disabling Specific URL Types**

Within your sitemap settings, you should be able to control which URL types are included in your sitemap. Common URL types that users disable after a Yoast migration include:

- **Author pages** — archive pages grouped by post author
- **Video pages** — pages associated with video content
- **Category pages** — taxonomy archive pages for post categories
- **Tag pages** — taxonomy archive pages for post tags

If your sitemap settings include controls for these URL types, disable the ones you want to exclude and save your changes. After saving, regenerate or refresh your sitemap so the exclusions take effect.

If you do not see controls for specific URL types in your sitemap settings, this configuration may need to be applied by the Search Atlas support team on your behalf. Please see the escalation steps below.

## **✅ Verifying Your Changes**

After saving and refreshing, confirm the excluded URL types no longer appear in your sitemap:

- Open your live sitemap URL (typically **yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml**) and check that author, video, category, or tag URLs are absent.
- If your sitemap is split into sub-sitemaps (e.g., a dedicated category sitemap), verify those sub-sitemaps are also removed or empty.

## **📋 Before You Escalate — What to Have Ready**

If you cannot locate the URL type controls in your sitemap settings, or if the exclusions are not taking effect after saving, please reach out to the support team with the following information:

- Your **project name** and the **domain** you migrated from Yoast
- The specific **URL types** you need to disable (e.g., author, video, category, tag)
- A description of what you see in your current sitemap settings, or a note that you cannot locate the sitemap configuration area
- Any error messages or unexpected behavior you have observed

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.