Google Can’t Fetch Sitemap Despite Following Steps

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with Google not being able to fetch your sitemap. Thank you for following the steps in the guide and for raising this concern.

If you have already tried the troubleshooting steps mentioned, here are a few additional things you can check:

1. Validate Your Sitemap: Ensure your sitemap is correctly configured by using a validation tool. You can use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check for any issues.
   

2. Ensure the Sitemap is Located in the Root Folder: Make sure your sitemap is in the root folder of your WordPress installation. The URL should look like this: https://yourdomainname.com/sitemap_index.xml.

3. Flush the Cache: If your sitemap appears outdated, try flushing the sitemap cache by increasing the value of the Links Per Sitemap in Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings and then saving your changes. After that, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes.
   
   

4. Check for Unsupported File Format: If you see an error regarding unsupported file format, ensure your sitemap file has the correct header:

If you’ve checked all these and the issue still persists, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will take over and assist you further.

We’re here to help!

Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math

Hello,

That tool is for XML files so it will return that error. Here’s a tool you can use to validate the sitemap:
https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html

However, your sitemap is already validating fine. In this case, please follow these steps to flush your sitemap cache:

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/

3. Disable the transient cache for the sitemap by applying this filter. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site:

/** 
 * Filter if XML sitemap transient cache is enabled.
 *
 * @param boolean $unsigned Enable cache or not, defaults to true
 */
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

If you’re not sure how to add this code, you can follow this guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

Once done, remove all your submitted sitemaps and resubmit your main sitemap only /sitemap_index.xml.

After that, give Google some time to recrawl your sitemaps and the “Last Read” column date will be updated as well.

Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

We visited the sitemap while simulating as a Googlebot and the sitemap gave the 200 status, which shows that everything is fine.

Please give Google some time to crawl and read your sitemap then check again.

If everything is fine on your end, and Google may still return the error, please note that not all sitemaps are processed by Google. Not necessarily because there is something wrong with the sitemap.

Even a perfect sitemap may not be processed by Google.

Most of the time, it’s still sitting in the queue waiting for processing. Remember, Google is processing millions of sitemap daily, sometimes it takes time to get to yours. But for whatever reason, Google never gets around to some sitemaps. It just doesn’t think it is worth it.

And Search Console sometimes shows ‘Pending’ as ‘couldn’t fetch’ incorrectly. You can check the replies of Google experts for the Couldn’t Fetch(especially for the TLDs except for .com) issues on the following threads:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/29055233/missing-xml-sitemap-data-in-google-search-console-for-tld-domain?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/31835653/sitemap-couldn-t-fetch-sitemap-couldn-t-be-read-by-google-search-console?hl=en

You can try using a different sitemap plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/xml-sitemap-generator-for-google/ to generate the sitemap and see if Google can read them. Please make sure to disable the Sitemap module of our plugin in WP Dashboard > Rank Math > Dashboard.

Let us know how that goes. Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

Don’t worry, currently it seems that it shows that error until Google has had time to process the sitemap. Give it some time and things should look fine.

Until your sitemap is processed it can display Couldn't fetch or the longer Sitemap could not be read message, in reality, it just means Google hasn’t fetched or processed it yet. There may be nothing wrong with the sitemap. When fetching/processing occurs, and there IS an issue, you will typically get a more specific message.

In the meantime, you can follow this guide on Google to debug the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451001?hl=en#fetch_errors&zippy=%2Csitemap-fetch-errors

We hope that helps.

Thank you.