This is a bit heartwarming – to see John Mueller back up Joost de Valk and Yoost when someone incorrectly claimed their was a bug with the Yoast SEO plugin causing major Google issues. John from Google came in and backed up Joost, confirming Joost and telling the plugin creator his plugin is not needed.
@planetzuda hey, re: this post: https://t.co/Md3RlslYTh and this plugin: https://t.co/kubFq7zoTQ
What you're claiming is simply false. @JohnMu has verified that. Please stop spreading this FUD, delete the article and the plugin.
— Joost de Valk (@jdevalk) January 28, 2019
Just to back Joost up here — a sitemap file is not a web page (even though you can view them in a browser). A sitemap file doesn't need to be indexed, it'll work just fine like that. It's cool to see folks dig into technical details, but in this case the noindex is irrelevant.
— đ John đ (@JohnMu) January 29, 2019