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Дарья
Дарья

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I Built a PHP Sitemap That Fixed My Google Indexation Problem

#wordpress #php #seo #webdev

My WordPress site has 65 posts, but Rank Math's sitemap was only showing 49. The remaining 16 posts were invisible to Google. Here's how I fixed it with a 30-line PHP file.

The Problem

Rank Math Free limits post-sitemap.xml to a fixed number of entries. When I published post #50, it silently pushed post #1 out of the sitemap. Google eventually deindexed the missing pages.

The Fix: ww-sitemap.php

I created a PHP file in my WordPress root that generates a sitemap dynamically from the database, excluding any URLs already in Rank Math's sitemap (to avoid duplicates):

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8');
require_once(__DIR__ . '/wp-load.php');

$posts = get_posts(['post_type' => 'post', 'post_status' => 'publish', 'posts_per_page' => -1]);

// Get existing sitemap URLs to avoid duplicates
$xml = @file_get_contents(home_url('/post-sitemap.xml'));
preg_match_all('/<loc>([^<]+)<\/loc>/', $xml, $m);
$existing = array_flip($m[1] ?? []);

echo '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
echo '<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">';

foreach ($posts as $post) {
    $url = get_permalink($post);
    if (!isset($existing[$url])) {
        $mod = get_the_modified_date('Y-m-d', $post);
        echo "<url><loc>{$url}</loc><lastmod>{$mod}</lastmod></url>";
    }
}
echo '</urlset>';
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Then I submitted ww-sitemap.php in Google Search Console alongside the existing sitemap_index.xml.

The Result

  • Before: 49 URLs in sitemap, 16 posts invisible to Google
  • After: All 65 posts discoverable
  • Bing picked up the missing pages within 48 hours via IndexNow

Lessons Learned

  1. Always verify your sitemap contains all your pages — don't assume the plugin handles it
  2. Dynamic PHP sitemaps are a valid fallback when plugin settings aren't accessible
  3. Submit supplementary sitemaps in GSC — you can have multiple

Site: watchwalls.pro — an Apple Watch wallpaper resource where I discovered this problem.

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