Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap returning a 404 error. This can happen for a few reasons, such as the sitemap not being generated correctly or issues with your website’s configuration.
Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and resolve the 404 error for your sitemap:
-
Check Your Sitemap URL: Ensure that the URL you are using to access the sitemap is correct. It should typically be something like `https://rankmath.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/list-of-all-the-pages-soft-404.jpg.
-
Regenerate Your Sitemap: If you are using a plugin like Rank Math, you can regenerate your sitemap by going to the plugin settings and looking for the sitemap options. This will help ensure that all pages are included correctly.
-
Check Server Settings: Sometimes, server settings can cause issues with sitemap accessibility. Make sure your web server is configured correctly to serve the sitemap file.
-
Permalinks Settings: Go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Settings > Permalinks, and simply click Save Changes. This can refresh your permalink structure and may resolve the issue.
-
Clear Cache: If you have any caching plugins installed, clear the cache to ensure that the latest version of your sitemap is being served.
-
Contact Hosting Provider: If the issue persists, it may be worth contacting your hosting provider to check if there are any server-side issues affecting the sitemap.
If you continue to experience difficulties, 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!
Sources:
How to Fix the Submitted URL Seems to Be a “Soft 404” Error » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
We checked your sitemap and we can see it is working properly without any issues:
If you’re still facing the 404 issue, please try to clear your browser cache and check again.
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
Hi, thanks for replying it throws 404 randomly and only solution is i change the urls from 200 to 199 and it starts working. But my main issue query was why it throws 404 on its own?
Hello,
If changing the links per sitemap option fixes the issue, then your sitemaps are still getting cached.
Please 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/
Also, disable the transient cache for the sitemap by applying this filter. This will make sure that your XML sitemap always reflects the latest changes on 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/
Looking forward to helping you.
