🔍 Overview
If your Website Studio website is experiencing sitemap errors, missing pages, noindex flags, incorrect title tags on Google, or unexpected ranking drops, several known platform issues may be contributing. This article explains each problem and the steps you can take to resolve them.
🗺️ Sitemap Errors and Missing Homepage
Your sitemap may be incomplete or contain errors for a few reasons:
- Draft or unpublished pages leaking into the sitemap: Previously, unpublished draft versions of your site could be crawled by search engines. This has been resolved, but if Google cached an earlier version of your sitemap, it may still show stale data.
- Preview and editor URLs in the sitemap: Internal editor, preview, and generated URLs were sometimes included in the live sitemap, polluting it with non-canonical addresses. This issue has been fixed. However, you should manually verify your sitemap is clean.
- Homepage missing from sitemap: This can happen if the homepage was not set as published in Website Studio, or if a redirect chain is preventing Google from resolving it correctly.
To check and fix your sitemap:
- Log in to Search Atlas and open Website Studio.
- Confirm your homepage is published and set as the primary page.
- Navigate to your live sitemap URL (typically yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml) and review every URL listed.
- Remove or unpublish any draft, preview, or duplicate pages that appear in the list.
- Request a sitemap re-fetch via Google Search Console under Sitemaps to prompt Google to re-crawl the updated version.
🚫 Noindex Flags on Pages
Noindex tags tell search engines not to index a page. If your pages carry unintended noindex flags, they will not appear in search results regardless of how well-optimised they are.
Common causes in Website Studio include:
- Preview or staging versions of the site being served with noindex headers, which can persist if the domain was not correctly transitioned to live.
- Individual page settings accidentally toggled to noindex during editing.
To check for and remove noindex flags:
- Open Website Studio and go to each key page's SEO Settings.
- Confirm the Allow search engines to index this page option is enabled.
- Use the Site Audit tool in Search Atlas to scan for pages returning noindex signals.
- For any page flagged as noindex, update the setting and republish the page.
- Verify the fix by entering your page URL into Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool.
🏷️ Incorrect Title Tags Displaying on Google
If Google is showing a different title than the one you set in Website Studio, this is usually caused by one of the following:
- Google rewrites titles when it determines the set title does not accurately represent the page content. This is a Google-side behaviour and not always within your control.
- Duplicate or competing pages: If preview URLs or draft pages were previously indexed, Google may be pulling the title from a cached version of one of those pages instead of your live page.
- Title tag not saved correctly: A publish step may have been missed after updating the title in Website Studio.
To correct title tag display issues:
- In Website Studio, open the page editor and navigate to SEO Settings.
- Confirm the title tag is accurate, relevant, and between 50–60 characters.
- Save and republish the page.
- In Google Search Console, use URL Inspection and select Request Indexing to prompt Google to recrawl the updated page.
- If old preview or draft URLs were previously indexed, request their removal using the Removals tool in Google Search Console.
📉 Poor Rankings After Persistent Issues
Months of sitemap errors, noindex flags, and competing preview URLs can negatively affect rankings even after the underlying issues are fixed. Recovery takes time because Google needs to recrawl and re-evaluate your site.
To accelerate recovery:
- Ensure all preview and draft domains are fully blocked from indexing. Preview domains serving sitemap or content files have now been addressed at the platform level, but confirm none remain accessible.
- Submit your corrected sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Use the Site Audit tool in Search Atlas to identify any remaining crawl errors, redirect issues, or duplicate content problems.
- Build or refresh internal links pointing to your most important pages to reinforce their priority to search engines.
- Monitor Google Search Console weekly to track improvements in crawl coverage and impressions.
📄 Blog Pages Displaying Raw XML
If a blog article published through Website Studio displays raw XML in the browser instead of formatted content, this is a known rendering issue that has been resolved at the platform level. If you still encounter this on any article:
- Open the article in Website Studio.
- Unpublish the article, then republish it to trigger a fresh render.
- Clear any caching on your domain if you use a CDN or caching plugin.
- Check the live URL in a private browser window to confirm the issue is resolved.
💬 Need More Help?
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.