Sitemap.xml still shows default image title and caption — proposed fix for Squarespace

The squarespace-generated sitemap.xml shows image data, which is good. What is not good is that it inserts the default title and caption for those images: "Make it stand out" and "Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference."

Those default values are not present to be edited in the Image block when used in the default Design mode. You have to change to a new Design style, remove the defaults, then change it back to the original Design style. This might be an acceptable workaround for a few images. The site in question has 522 images and counting. That is a lot of making it stand out.

Proposed solution for Squarespace: when generating the sitemap.xml file if an image has the default title or caption text do not include them. I feel confident that no one will want "Make it stand out" or "Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference." as their image title and caption, respectively. And they pollute the SEO for the website. So simply omit them from the sitemap.xml.

Please, Squarespace. Make this happen. It should be an easy couple of conditionals in your generation script. Thank you!

Past thread on this, 1.5+ years ago: 

In my opinion, this is a huge issue for anyone using Squarespace 7.1.

Whenever an image block is added to a Classic (not Fluid Engine) section, a Blog Post, an Event or the Product Additional Info section, Squarespace add the demo text "Make it stand out" and "Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference." and there's nothing you can do about it! As mentioned above, this has been happening since early 2021. I've written about it in this post.

I asked about this issue again in 2023 and was told:

"While we understand it may be inconvenient, I do need to confirm that Engineering doesn’t currently have plans to fix or improve the sitemap issue you reported [in June 2021]."

There's a further SEO issue when you use pre-built page layouts. With these, a default SEO title is assigned (silently). Instead of defaulting to the page title, it sets the SEO title to the page layout name - such as "General 1", "Appointments 1", "General 2", "Blog 2" and so on.

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14 minutes ago, paul2009 said:

There are thousands of sites with an SEO title of "General 1", "Appointments 1", "General 2", "Blog 2" and so on.

That is often one of the first things I fix for people when they ask me to help with their Squarespace site. I agree that it shouldn't have to be fixed! Just like the default image data in sitemap.xml. These seem like simple improvements that would positively effect a huge number of websites so they "just work" better for people. Why are they not implemented is quite a mystery.

This is happening to my sitemap right now. I don't want to change my Design because the site is finished and I'm afraid I will break something. Is there any other way to remove the "Make it stand out" and "Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference" from titles and captions? The sitemap is https://www.remotefirstcoaching.com/sitemap.xml

On 9/16/2023 at 7:14 PM, Janet-CA said:

Is there any other way to remove the "Make it stand out" and "Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference" from titles and captions?

You'll need to remove the text manually from each image. I've described this in this post.

For info, there's another thread about this subject here.

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