Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math support and sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Can you please follow these steps?
1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
After checking all that, remove all your sitemap/s from Google Search Console and submit only the primary sitemap (sitemap_index.xml) to check if this helps you with your current issue.
Please let us know how that goes. We are here to assist.
I have performed the above steps and re-submitted the sitemap, now when should I inspect the given URL ?
Also on some other settings for LiteSpeed cache exclude I found the following code, which one is correct in the above-mentioned post or the following?
sitemap?\.xml?
[a-z0-9_\-]*sitemap[a-z0-9_\-]*\xml|xsl)?
([az0-9_\-]*?)sitemap([a-z0-9_\-]*)?.xml
thanks
Kami
Hello,
You should exclude the sitemaps using the code present in the guide shared by my colleague.
However, I did some further troubleshooting and noticed a few issues:
1. Upon testing the variations of your sitemap with https://httpstatus.io/, I found that all the variations are returning 200 status. You can have a look at the screenshot in the sensitive data section of this ticket.
Except for the preferred variation (which should return only a 200 status), all the non-preferred variations of the website should redirect to the preferred variation and return a 301 and 200 status.
Please follow the steps in this link:
https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/#num-5-check-for-the-correct-version-of-the-sitemap and redirect to the correct variation.
You can also get in touch with your web host regarding this.
2. I accessed the affected URL as Googlebot and it is returning a 403 (forbidden) status. A screenshot is in the sensitive data section.
In fact, your homepage is also returning the same status.
Please reach out to your web host and ensure that the website/URLs are properly accessible and return a 200 status to Googlebot.
Once done, clear your website and server’s cache (if any) and wait for Google to crawl the website again and see if that helps.
Thank you.
Thanks for reply, on some header checking sies for given url i get 200 and 301 codes can you share on which site your get 403 error?
thanks
Kamal
Also as you have mentioned in the URL https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/cpanel/how-to-redirect-non-www-urls-to-www#hPanel
I am using the same server and also apply both methods with Cpanel and with hat access file, but both fail to produce the desired results
Hello,
Please ensure to clear your website cache including any server-level caching such as Cloudflare. If the issue persists, kindly check this one with your hosting provider as they should be able to help you apply the settings to fix the sitemap URL variations.
Let us know how that goes.
As for the URLs that return a 403 error code. For now, it seems the 403 is gone. This may be just a temporary issue.
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you.
Hello,
I checked all the variations of your sitemap using this tool https://httpstatus.io/ and found still two variations are returning 200 status. Please check the screenshot in the sensitive data section.
Please follow the steps above mentioned by my colleague. If you’re not sure how to do that you can get in touch with your web host. They will be able to help you with this.
After that, Please add this filter in the theme’s functions.php file:
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
Here is a guide you can follow to add the filter:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/#functions-php-file
Once done, clear your website cache and check the sitemap if that fixed the issue.
Hi,
as per the previous reply, two preferred variations return 200 and non-HTTP return 200 and 301, same is the case with rank math HTTP if you check it and mine is also the same as rank math, if it’s wrong can you share some example screenshot codes which should be returned?
thanks
Hello,
You may try removing all sitemaps from your Google Search Console and re-submit the sitemap index (https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml).
Please note that Googlebot takes time to crawl and index new posts. Please give it some time, and it will get indexed in the search results.
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thanks, I have done that, let’s see in a couple of days what happains
Hello,
Please let us know the update.
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
