Search console cann’t read the site map

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with the sitemap in Google Search Console. The "Couldn’t fetch" error can occur for a few reasons. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and potentially resolve the issue:

1. Validate Your Sitemap

First, ensure that your sitemap is correctly configured. You can validate your sitemap using the Validate XML Sitemap tool. If there are no issues detected, you should see a success message.

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. Check Your Site’s Indexing Settings

Ensure that your posts are set to index. You can do this by going to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and enabling the Index checkbox in the Robots Meta settings.

4. Flush the Cache

If your sitemap appears outdated, you may need to flush the sitemap cache. Navigate to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings, increase the value of Links Per Sitemap by one, and save your settings. Then, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes to apply the current settings.

5. Add the Correct Version of Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

Make sure you are submitting the correct version of your sitemap URL in Google Search Console. You can refer to the following article for guidance on adding a URL property to Google Search Console.

6. Resubmit Your Sitemap

After making these adjustments, resubmit your sitemap URL in Google Search Console under Indexing → Sitemaps.

If you continue to experience issues after following these steps, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so we can assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern, and we hope this helps resolve the issue!

Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math

Hello,

Please follow the steps below:

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. Apply the following filter code to your site.

add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');

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

4. Remove all your sitemaps from your Google Search Console and re-submit only the index sitemap (https://website.com/sitemap_index.xml)

As for the issue with the avocat-francais-roumain.com website, we might need to take a closer look at the settings. Please edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.

Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.

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/

We really look forward to helping you.

Hello,

Please share a screenshot of this error. You can take a screenshot using https://imgur.com/upload so that we can investigate the issue further.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you.

Hello,

Thanks for being patient and cooperative with us. We appreciate the extra details you provided.

We did a thorough test on your sitemap and everything looks good. It works fine on every test we ran. There are a few possible ways forward:

This might be a glitch on Google’s side, which means it could go away on its own in a few days. Sometimes Google shows the “couldn’t fetch” error instead of the “pending” status. We checked if Google can see your page using the Google Rich Test, and it can.

You can also do this yourself by going to the Google URL Inspection Tool and entering your full sitemap URL. Then click “Live Test” (https://i.rankmath.com/i/qi72Gd) and switch to the Source tab (https://i.rankmath.com/i/VHkaDV). You should see the XML content of your sitemap there. If you do, then it means Google can fetch your content, and the error on your search console is just a temporary glitch on Google’s end.

This could also be related to the security plugins on your site (or server), like WordFence or something else that might block or limit the Googlebot IP. You can test this by deactivating WordFence temporarily and then removing and adding your sitemap again.

We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for choosing Rank Math!