Small update:
After digging a bit on my GSC, the pages sent by the sitemaps suddenly disappeared between the 13th and the 16th of December. The pages are still indexed but considered “not sent via the sitemaps” since these dates (depending on the site).
Maybe it could be related to a RankMath update around 2 weeks ago? Like v1.0.54.3 or v1.0.54.2
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Please go through the fixes shared here to try and resolve the issue with your sitemap: https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-sitemap-issues/
Also, please check the following:
Is the sitemap working fine in your browser? You can check that by going domain(.)com/sitemap_index.xml
If the sitemap is working fine, you can try validating it on this link: https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html
You can also share some of the sitemap URL(s) so we can check from our end.
Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.
Hi,
Thanks for the quick reply!
I went through the fixes and nothing worked so far.
The sitemaps don’t work in my browsers. I have the error messages mentioned in my first post.
They are validated when I test them in xml-sitemaps.com, but in the end they still don’t work in GSC.
Sure, I will provide a sample sitemap URL.
Thanks!
Hello,
Thank you for that information.
Could you please confirm the sitemap is being generated by Rank math? You likely have a sitemap file in your root folder which is being loaded.
If you have confirmed that and the issue persists, we might need to look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your FTP and WP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
I tried to remove the blank lines in my wp-config.php file and theme’s functions.php file but nothing happened (same errors).
I’ve added the WP logins in the sensitive data.
Thank you
Hello,
Thank you for the additional information.
I’ve checked your sitemap in https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html, and it seems that is already working fine. Upon investigating, your sitemap seems empty(white page), but it has a source code coming from Rank Math.
In this case, please check if you have a static file with the same name as your sitemap file (sitemap_index.xml) in your root folder. You should FTP into your server and remove the file.
Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Hey Reinelle,
I just checked again and there is no sitemap file like this in the root folder for the domain.
Thanks
Hello,
If you validate your sitemap here: https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html, it is valid. Your sitemap also contains your related URLs if you check the sitemaps page source(Ctrl + U)
Are there any error shown in your GSC related to the sitemap?
Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.
Hello,
I just checked and apparently the sitemap for this site is now working in GSC.
I checked my other sites and some are still showing the error “empty sitemap” in GSC, but all of these haven’t been checked by Google for the last few days. I believe Google will validate them as soon as it checks them again.
So it should be okay from now on!
Hello,
Glad to hear that tis is working on GSC, that is the main intent of having a sitemap in the first place.
The key thing to make sure your sitemap are updated regularly and to avoid issues while using Rank math sitemaps is to make sure your sitemaps are always excluded from caching. 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/
Please let me know if the issue is resolved for the other sites or if not. We are here to assist.
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.
