Sitemap does not index

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap not being indexed. The "Couldn’t fetch" error in Google Search Console can be frustrating, especially after trying various troubleshooting steps. Here are some suggestions to help resolve the issue:

1. Validate Your Sitemap

Make sure your sitemap is correctly configured. You can use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check for any issues. If it’s valid, you should see a success message.

2. Ensure the Sitemap is Located in the Root Folder

Confirm that your sitemap is located in the root folder of your WordPress installation. The URL should look like this:
`https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-sitemap-issues/

3. Check Indexing Settings

Ensure that your posts are set to index. Go to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and make sure the Index checkbox is enabled in the Robots Meta settings.

4. Add the Correct Site URL to Google Search Console

Make sure you have added the correct site URL as a property in Google Search Console and verified it. You can refer to this article on adding a URL property to the Search Console.

5. Resubmit Your Sitemap

After ensuring everything is set up correctly, navigate to Indexing → Sitemaps in Google Search Console, paste your sitemap URL, and click SUBMIT. Make sure there are no spaces in the URL.

6. Check Server Configuration

If you are using an Apache or Nginx server, ensure that the necessary rewrite rules are added to your server configuration. This is crucial for Rank Math to generate the sitemap correctly.

For Apache, add this to your .htaccess file:

# START of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([a-z]+)?-?sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 [L]
# END of Rank Math Sitemap Rewrite Rules

For Nginx, add this to your configuration:

# START Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps
rewrite ^/sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 last;
rewrite ^/([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&sitemap_n=$2 last;
rewrite ^/([a-z]+)?-sitemap.xsl$ /index.php?xsl=$1 last;
# END Nginx Rewrites for Rank Math Sitemaps

7. Flush Permalinks

Sometimes, flushing permalinks can help resolve issues with sitemap accessibility. Go to the Permalinks page in your WordPress dashboard and click Save Changes even if you didn’t make any changes.

If you’ve tried all these steps and are still facing issues, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further. We appreciate your patience and hope to resolve this for you soon!

Hello,

Your sitemap is working fine. please note that not all sitemaps are processed by Google. Not necessarily because there is something wrong with the sitemap.

Even a perfect sitemap may not be processed by Google.

Most of the time, it’s still sitting in the queue waiting for processing. Remember, Google is processing millions of sitemap daily, sometimes it takes time to get to yours. But for whatever reason, Google never gets around to some sitemaps. It just doesn’t think it is worth it.

And Search Console sometimes shows ‘Pending’ as ‘couldn’t fetch’ incorrectly. You can check the replies of Google experts for the Couldn’t Fetch(especially for the TLDs except for .com) issues on the following threads:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/29055233/missing-xml-sitemap-data-in-google-search-console-for-tld-domain?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/thread/31835653/sitemap-couldn-t-fetch-sitemap-couldn-t-be-read-by-google-search-console?hl=en

You can try using a different sitemap plugin like https://wordpress.org/plugins/xml-sitemap-generator-for-google/ to generate the sitemap and see if Google can read them. Please make sure to disable the Sitemap module of our plugin in WP Dashboard > Rank Math > Dashboard.

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

Hello,

These might just be an issue with the status displayed in GSC, as you can see your URLs are being crawled and indexed, some as recent as 2 days ago:

But you can reach out to Google by posting on their Webmaster Forum or contact Google directly.

Don’t hesitate to let us know if you need help with anything else.