My sitemap has errors

Hello,

I apologize for the issue you are facing with your website’s sitemap. The error message you mentioned, “Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead,” indicates that there might be some formatting issues with your sitemap.

To address this issue, please follow these steps:

1. Ensure Correct Sitemap Header:

   • Make sure your sitemap file is using the correct header format:

   • Check that the namespace in the header ends with 0.9, not .9.

   • Use straight single or double quotes to enclose XML attributes, avoiding curly quotes.

2. Check Sitemap Status Code:

   • Verify your sitemap’s status code using the httpstatus tool.
   • If the status code is 200, redirect all XML sitemap variations to the final sitemap version.

3. Clear Website Cache:

   • After making the necessary changes, clear your website cache.

If the issue persists after following these steps, please let us know by replying to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further.

Thank you for bringing this concern to our attention.

Best regards,

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

Hello,

We tried to check your sitemap URL, but the website is hidden at the moment, and we
could not gain access.

As far as the URL you have shared, this is in the correct format. To resolve the issue, could you please follow these steps?

#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. If the above steps don’t seem to work, kindly apply the following filter code to your site.

add_filter( ‘rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching’, ‘__return_false’);

Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/

We hope this helps.

Do not hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.

Hello,

Thank you for your patience.

We are seeing the same error when viewing your sitemap

If we are seeing the error, then bots and search engines see the same. You should get in touch with your web host to fix this lock on your site.

Looking forward to helping you.