Draft pages being indexed or on sitemap?

Publishing help SEO
1

I recently checked my Google search console and see that Google tried to index a bunch of my draft pages. These are pages that were never published and there’s no link to them. Also they are not in my sitemap.

I’m guessing that there was some glitch in Webflow where it included draft pages in my sitemap at some point, and then Google saw them and tried to index them, only to get a 404 (not found)?

Or am I missing any other explanation? Thanks for any insights!

2

It’s possible Google picked them up from an earlier version of the sitemap before they were removed. Try requesting URL removals in Google Search Console to speed up de-indexing.

3

Hi, the pages were never published. So the only way they would have been on the sitemap if there was a glitch.