Sitemap empty (according to Search Console)

Hello,

We apologize for the issue you are facing with your sitemap showing as empty in Google Search Console. It seems like you’ve already taken steps to ensure that Googlebot can access your sitemap, which is great.

Here are a few steps you can follow to troubleshoot the empty sitemap 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 returns a success message, then your sitemap is valid.

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://yourdomainname.com/sitemap_index.xml

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 Sitemap to Google Search Console Again

After ensuring everything is set up correctly, try adding the sitemap URL again in Google Search Console under Indexing → Sitemaps. Make sure there are no spaces in the URL when you submit it.

5. Wait for Google to Fetch the Sitemap

Sometimes, it may take a while for Google to fetch the sitemap after making changes. If everything seems correct but the error persists, it might just be a matter of waiting for Google to re-crawl your site.

If you continue to experience issues after following these steps, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern, and we’re here to help!

Hello,

Thank you for your query and we are so sorry about the trouble this must have caused.

Sorry but ignore the Rankbot about the XML in the root directory of your website.

The sitemap does go empty if you visit the sitemap with Googlebot as your user-agent. See screenshot:

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. After that, remove all sitemaps from Google Search Console and resubmit only the primary sitemap (https://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml).

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

Hello,

Sure, let us know how this goes.

Meanwhile, if you have any other concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime so we can assist you further.

Looking forward to helping you.

Hello,

This is not only an issue with the sitemap. If you check your homepage or any other page, you’ll see it is not returning any content for Googlebot:

In this case, we suggest you get in touch with your hosting provider and inform them about this issue as they might have a solution for this.

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

Thank you.