Sitemap Shows Zero Discovered Pages & URLs Not Being Indexed

#1070873
  • Resolved SANTOSH KUMAR

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    Dear RankMath Support Team,

    I’m facing critical indexing issues with my website meritnews24.com, and need your assistance to resolve the following problems:

    1. Sitemap Processing Error (Temporary)
    Issue: Google Search Console shows my sitemap URL (e.g., sitemap_index.xml) but reports a “Temporary processing error”.
    Impact: Google cannot read or process the sitemap, which prevents new pages from being discovered.
    Screenshot Attached: View Image

    2. URLs Not Indexed (Crawled but Not Indexed)
    Issue: Multiple posts/pages are not indexed in Google. The GSC “Page Indexing Report” shows:
    Status: “Crawled – currently not indexed”
    Sitemap: “No referring sitemap detected”
    Referring Page: “None detected”
    Expected Behavior: URLs should be indexed via the sitemap or internal links.
    Screenshot Attached: View Image

    3. Sitemap Shows Zero Discovered Pages
    Issue: The sitemap in Google Search Console shows “Discovered URLs: 0”, even though the sitemap exists and contains URLs.
    Screenshot Attached: View Image1, View Image2

    Request for Help:
    1. Investigate why the sitemap returns a temporary processing error and fix it.
    2. Diagnose why Google crawls but does not index pages (e.g., low priority, content quality, or technical barriers).
    3. Resolve the “zero discovered pages” issue in the sitemap.
    4. Verify if RankMath’s sitemap settings or plugin conflicts are causing these problems.

    Please let me know if you require any additional details or access to the server. I’ve attached screenshots for clarity. Please resolve the problem on a high priority level, as it is already affecting organic traffic.

    Thank you!
    Santosh Kumar
    s**************@g********
    Website URL: meritnews24.com

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • RankBot

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Hello,

    We apologize for the issues you are facing with your website’s sitemap and indexing. Thank you for providing detailed information about the problems. Here are some steps you can take to address these issues:

    1. Sitemap Processing Error (Temporary)

    • Flush Permalinks: Go to Settings → Permalinks in your WordPress admin area and click Save Changes. This can help resolve temporary processing errors.
    • Validate Your Sitemap: Use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check if your sitemap is correctly configured.

    2. URLs Not Indexed (Crawled but Not Indexed)

    • Check for Technical Issues: Ensure there are no restrictions in your robots.txt file that might prevent Google from indexing your pages. You can check this in Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.
    • Improve Internal Linking: Make sure that your pages have internal links from other high-traffic pages on your site, which can help Google discover them.
    • Content Quality: Ensure that the content on the pages is valuable and not considered thin or duplicate content.

    3. Sitemap Shows Zero Discovered Pages

    • Check Sitemap Settings: Go to Rank Math SEO → Sitemap Settings and ensure that all post types you want indexed are enabled in the sitemap.
    • Index Settings: Make sure your posts are set to index by going to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and checking the Index checkbox for your posts.

    4. Plugin Conflicts

    • Check for Conflicts: Use the Health Check plugin to identify any potential conflicts with other plugins that might be affecting the sitemap functionality.

    If these steps do not resolve the issues, we recommend replying to this ticket with any additional details or errors you encounter, and a human agent from our support team will assist you further.

    Thank you for your patience, and we hope to help you resolve these issues soon!

    Sources:
    Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
    How to Fix Indexing Issues in Google Search Console » Rank Math
    Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math

    Jeremy

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Hello,

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

    1. The “Temporary processing error” in Google Search Console is not related to the sitemap generated by Rank Math. This is an internal issue on Google’s side, and it typically resolves on its own. In the meantime, Google may still index your pages using internal links.

    If the issue persists for an extended period, we recommend reaching out to Google Search Central for further clarification.

    2. This error means that Google has crawled your page but has not indexed it yet. As we already know, Google does not index all the URLs we submit, and finding a certain number of URLs under this status is completely normal. You may refer to this guide: https://rankmath.com/kb/crawled-currently-not-indexed/

    3. Please follow the steps below:

    Step 1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
    https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp

    Step 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/

    Step 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/

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

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

    SANTOSH KUMAR

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    Thank you for your concerned reply. I have followed all your suggested steps and resubmitted my sitemap in Google Search Console after removing the previous one, but the result is the same; no changes have occurred. Please check…….

    SANTOSH KUMAR

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    The changes have been made in the child theme only, but I am using a parent theme. The “rank-math.php” file is showing only in the child theme. Should I do the changes in the parent theme as well? Will any conflict arise? Please guide me through….

    SANTOSH KUMAR

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello sir,
    My problem is not resolved yet. Please check and get it done.
    Thank You

    Adetayo

    3 months, 1 week ago

    Hello,

    If you’ve made the changes in the child theme, that’s perfectly fine and actually the recommended way to make customizations. You don’t need to apply the same changes to the parent theme. There won’t be any conflict as long as the file in the child theme is correctly set up and loaded.

    Since the issue persists, we might need to take a closer look at your website to investigate this further. 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.
    Sensitive Data Section

    It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the plugin below 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.

    Jeremy

    3 months ago

    Hello,

    You seem to be currently using AIOSEO for your sitemap. We have enabled our plugin to test the sitemap and it seems to be working just fine.

    Please note that the error you see means that Google didn’t use the sitemap to find your content URLs.

    It mostly happens when you have good internal linking or use the Instant Indexing plugin.

    In this case, you either have to wait for the search engines to completely crawl the sitemaps or let it be since sitemaps are just a backup crawling mechanism for search engines. Usually, the URLs are discovered via other means such as internal links or backlinks.

    Here’s a link for more information:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/zero-discovered-urls-through-sitemap/

    Looking forward to helping you.

    RankBot

    2 months ago

    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.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

The ticket ‘Sitemap Shows Zero Discovered Pages & URLs Not Being Indexed’ is closed to new replies.