Hello,
Thank you for contacting us.
We understand your concern about the sitemap being set as ‘noindex’, but we assure you that this is how it should be.
The reason is that we don’t want Google to index the sitemap itself, we only want them to index the pages and posts that are listed on the sitemap. The sitemap is just a way to tell Google what pages and posts you have on your website, not a page that you want to show up in search results.
The important thing is that your pages and posts are set to ‘index’, which means that they are eligible to appear in Google search results.
You can check this by looking at the Rank Math settings on each page or post, or by using the Google URL Inspection tool.
To make sure that Google knows about your sitemap and can crawl your pages and posts, you need to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console.
This is a simple process that you can follow by using our tutorial: https://rankmath.com/kb/submit-sitemap-to-google/
We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions or concerns.
Thank you.
Thanks for your reply, it is rare to see such quick and detailed replies!
Yes, this makes sense, thanks for explaining. However, if you could help with the issue that google cannot fetch this sitemap, is it perhaps just a case of “wait longer..” or something is broken?
”
Submitted sitemaps
Sitemap Type Submitted Last read Status Discovered pages Discovered videos
/car_pattern-sitemap.xml Unknown 4 Jun 2025 Couldn’t fetch 0 0
“
Hello,
You can follow this guide to troubleshoot the couldn’t fetch issue: https://rankmath.com/kb/couldnt-fetch-error-google-search-console/
If everything is fine on your end, and Google still returns the error, 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.
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
We tested the concerned sitemap and found no issues with it.
We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions or concerns.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
