News sitemap lists articles older than 2 days
news_sitemap_old_urlsShort answer
Your News sitemap contains articles whose publication date is more than two days old. Google's guidelines ask News sitemaps to include only articles published in the last two days; older ones should stay in your regular sitemap. Change the generator so it drops articles after 48 hours. The articles do not disappear from Google; they simply leave the news file.
Why it matters
A News sitemap is a "what's new" signal. When it fills up with old articles it grows toward the 1,000-URL limit, takes longer to fetch and makes it harder for Google to spot what is actually new. It usually means the generator is not filtering by date, or the file is static and never regenerated.
How Glimana detects it
For every sitemap that contains news entries, Glimana compares each entry's <news:publication_date> with the current time (in UTC). The rule fires when entries are older than two days. The evidence shows the sitemap, how many entries are old, the oldest date and example URLs.
How to fix it
- Find the affected pages in Glimana. Open Issues › News sitemap lists articles older than 2 days. This is a site-level check, so the single row carries the full evidence: the URLs, values or days involved. The task under Tasks shows the same list and the expected gain.
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Apply the fix on your platform.
Filter the News sitemap to articles published in the last 48 hours, and make sure the file is regenerated (or served dynamically) rather than written once. Keep every article in your regular sitemap, which has no age limit. If an old article was updated, keep its original publication date; an update does not make it news again.
News sitemap features in SEO plugins apply the two-day window automatically. Old entries usually mean the sitemap is served from a page cache or CDN that never expires: exclude the news sitemap URL from the cache (or set a short cache time) and purge it.
Check the news sitemap app's settings for a time window, and that the file is not cached indefinitely by a proxy in front of the store.
Query with
published_at >= now() - 48 hoursand order newest first. Do not use the last-modified date for the filter. SetCache-Controlto a few minutes and purge on publish. -
Publish and clear caches. Save and publish, then make sure the crawler will see the new version: WordPress — clear the page cache in your cache plugin and purge the CDN; Shopify — theme and content changes go live on save, but purge any CDN in front of the store; custom code — deploy and purge the edge cache. Check in a private window or with
curl -s https://your-domain/page | grep -i '<title\|canonical\|robots'that the live HTML has changed; Glimana reads what the server sends, not what your browser has cached. - Verify in Glimana. Open the task under Tasks and click Mark as done. The affected pages are queued for a verification crawl within a few hours, and the task closes when no news entry is older than two days. If the check still fails, the task returns to New with a note; when it passes, the task is listed under Resolved technical issues on Impact reports. To check sooner, use Re-crawl affected pages on the issue.
How the fix is verified
The next crawl re-reads the News sitemaps; the task closes when no entry is older than two days.
FAQ
Should I remove old articles from my regular sitemap too?
No. Your regular sitemap should keep every indexable article. Only the News sitemap is limited to the last two days.