Sitemap couldn’t fetch

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap in Google Search Console. It sounds like you’ve already taken several steps to troubleshoot the problem, which is great.

Here are some additional steps you can take to resolve the "Couldn’t fetch" error for your sitemaps:

1. Validate Your Sitemap: Use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check if your sitemaps are correctly configured. This will help identify any issues that may be causing the fetch error.
   

2. Ensure the Sitemap is Located in the Root Folder: Make sure your sitemap is located 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 Flush the Cache: If your sitemap appears outdated, try flushing the sitemap cache by navigating to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings and increasing the value of Links Per Sitemap by one, then save your settings. After that, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes to ensure the current settings are applied.
   

4. Exclude the Sitemap From Caching: Ensure that your sitemap is not being cached by any caching plugins. You can refer to this knowledgebase article on ensuring that your sitemaps are excluded from caching.

5. Check Robots.txt File: Make sure there are no rules in your robots.txt file that might be blocking access to your sitemaps. You can check this under Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.

6. Add the Correct Sitemap to Google Search Console: Ensure you are submitting the correct sitemap URL in Google Search Console. If you have multiple variations of your site (http vs https, www vs non-www), make sure you have added all variations as properties in Google Search Console.

If you have tried all these steps and are still experiencing issues, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so we can assist you further. A human agent from our support team will take over and provide more specific guidance.

Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope to help you resolve it soon!

Hello,

Since the issue persists, try disabling the transient cache for the sitemap. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on your site. Kindly add this code snippet to 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/.

After you add the code, please clear any cache on your site or server, then remove all the sitemaps you added to GSC and only re-add the main sitemap (/sitemap_index.xml).

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

Thank you.

Hello,

Please note that Google can take some time to recrawl your sitemaps. You can monitor the “Last read/crawl date” column in the sitemap index as it will update the date when Google crawls your sitemap.

Also, please note that the ‘Discovered Pages’ on the Google Search Console only shows the number of pages that were discovered using the sitemap, and since the sitemap is not the only tool Google uses to discover pages, the number of ‘Discovered Pages’ might differ from your number of pages on your sitemap.

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

Thank you.