Sitemap Not Detecting Issue

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap not being detected by search engines. Thank you for raising this concern.

Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, flushing permalinks can resolve sitemap detection issues. You can do this by going to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress admin area and clicking the “Save Changes” button, even if you didn’t make any changes.
   

2. Check Sitemap URL: Ensure that you are submitting the correct sitemap URL to search engines. The correct URL should be `https://rankmath.com/kb/sitemap-404-error/.

3. Check Robots.txt: Make sure that your robots.txt file is not blocking the sitemap. You can check this by going to Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.

4. Check for Plugin Conflicts: If the issue persists, there might be a plugin conflict. You can use the Health Check plugin to identify any conflicts.

5. Server Configuration: If you are using an Apache or Nginx server, ensure that the appropriate rewrite rules are set up as mentioned in our documentation:

   • For Apache, add the following to your .htaccess file:

     # START of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules
     RewriteEngine On
     RewriteBase /
     RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L]
     RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]
     RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)?-?sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 [L]
     # END of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules

   • For Nginx, add the following to your configuration file:

     # START Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps
     rewrite ^/sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
     rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;
     rewrite ^/([a-z]+)?-sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 last;
     # END Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps

After trying these steps, please check if the issue is resolved. If it still persists, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will overtake the ticket and assist you further.

Thank you for your patience!

Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math Support.

We checked your page sitemap and it is opening properly as shown below:

We also validated the index sitemap and can see that all the sitemap is validating correctly as shown in the image below:

Please, clear your website cache, then remove all sitemaps in the Search Console and resubmit only the /sitemap_index.xml in the Search Console.

Let us know how this goes.

Thank you.