How to customize the author sitemap

The Yoast SEO plugin can create a sitemap that lists the author archive pages for sites with multiple authors. This author sitemap lists the authors, and you can choose to customize the sitemap as a result.

Screenshot showing list of authors in author sitemap. — Author sitemap inside Yoast SEO sitemap

How to customize the author sitemap
How to exclude individual authors from the sitemap
Exclude authors filter

How to customize the author sitemap

You can customize the author sitemap.

In your WordPress Dashboard, go to Yoast SEO
Under Settings, go to Advanced
Open the Author Archives tab
Slide the Enable author archives toggle to on and save changes
Slide the Show author archives in search results toggle to on to create an author sitemap
If you slide the toggle to off, no author sitemap will be created.
Slide the Show author archives without posts in search results to on to include all authors in the sitemap
If you slide the toggle to off, only authors with published content will be included in the sitemap. For excluding individual authors, follow the instructions below.
Fill in the SEO title and Meta description
This content will be used for the title and meta description. You can also insert variables.
Click Save changes to to save your progress

How to exclude individual authors from the sitemap

After enabling author archives, you can prevent individual users from appearing in the author sitemap. Please note that excluding an individual author does not remove the author’s contents from other sitemaps.

Log in to your WordPress website
When you’re logged in, you will be in your Dashboard.
Click on Users
On the left-hand side, you will see a menu. In that menu, click on Users.
Click Edit under the right user
Under Yoast SEO Settings, check the Do not allow search engines to show this author’s archives in search results. box
Click Update User

If you have a single author, please disable the author archives.

Exclude authors filter

Yoast comes with the following filter:

wpseo_sitemap_exclude_author

This filter can be further used to customize the sitemap to exclude authors. It can be used to bulk exclude authors or exclude authors based on certain conditions. This will likely require some development work. You can learn more about the filters from developer portal.