Sitemap pages 404-ing

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap pages returning 404 errors. It can be frustrating when things don’t work as expected.

To resolve the 404 error for your sitemap, we recommend trying the following steps:

1. Flush Permalinks: Go to your WordPress admin area, navigate to Settings → Permalinks, and hit the “Save Changes” button. This action can often resolve issues related to permalinks and sitemap generation.
   

2. Check Rewrite Rules: If flushing permalinks does not work, you may need to check your server’s rewrite rules. For Apache servers, ensure that your .htaccess file contains the necessary rewrite rules for Rank Math sitemaps. Here’s an example of what you might need to add:

   # 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

3. Nginx Configuration: If you are using Nginx, ensure that your Nginx configuration file has the correct rewrite rules as well:

   # 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

4. Check for Plugin Conflicts: Sometimes, other plugins can interfere with the sitemap functionality. You can use the Health Check plugin to identify any potential conflicts.

If you have tried these steps and are still experiencing issues, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further.

Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope to get this resolved for you soon!

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