Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you and had to feel that way.
If Google reports that “Your file appears to be an HTML page” error in your sitemaps while Rank Math is activated, you can follow the steps in the link below for a fix:
https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-sitemap-issues/#file-appears-html-page
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Hello,
Thank you for following up.
Could you also provide the affected sitemap URL/s where Rank Math is activated in the designated Sensitive Data section to investigate further?
It is completely secure, and only our support staff has access to that section.
Thank you, and we really look forward to helping you.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
done.
i reactivated rank math sitemap now to get this. so you can check it.
Hello,
Thank you for that additional information.
I’ve checked your sitemap yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml, and it seems to be redirected to your homepage. Upon further investigation, it seems that you’re still using a sitemap generator plugin which will show if you access yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Please see the screenshots attached in the designated Sensitive Data section.
If you already deactivated that plugin, please modify your robots.txt, and remove the sitemap line the plugin generated. Please also ensure that there’s no static sitemap.xml file in your website’s root directory that plugin might had generated.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Done. Now still the error, that its html instead of xml.
Reply to your message: sure, because i am looking for a solution. i dont just wait untill you get your stuff fixed.
and why are you providing a sitemap as html?
Hello,
Thank you for following up.
I’ve checked your sitemap, and it’s already showing. However, it seems that you haven’t verified the www (or non-www) and https (or http) version of your website. Please see the screenshot in the Sensitive Data section.
Ensure that only 1 version of the sitemap is working (200 Ok status), and the rest are redirecting to it. You can also use this tool to check.
Please also ensure that your sitemap is not being cached by plugin or server-level. To flush your sitemap cache, please follow these steps:
1. Head over to WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks
Hit the save button once.
2. Go to WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Sitemap Settings
Hit the save button once.
To exclude your sitemap from being cached by a plugin, please follow the steps in the link below:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
ok i solved this by htaccess. (forced https and 301)
but the sitemap is still html. that have nothing to do with urls or something. Even the caches are flushed several times.
maybe its just an error in rank math? or is it again googles fault, because they can not decide, if a file is xml or html? 😀
ok. now i solved this. no, i want to be honest. i paid an indian programmer do fix this. There is a cache-bug in rank-math, what still uses the url, what was active at install of the plugin. i changed from http://www.wom87 to wom87 and rankmath still uses http://www.wom87
so for me its fixed now. maybe you can check taht on your plugin as well.
i dont know for sure, what he did exactly, and i dont want to know.
untill you get this error fixed, i deactivated automatic updates.
thanks for trying
Hello,
We are glad that your sitemap is already working on Google Search Console.
If you have any other concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime by creating a new ticket to assist you further with anything else.
Thank you.
Hello,
Sorry about the hassle. We should have recommended the fix. Basically, the redirect needs to be done manually for now and we should have recommended that to you sooner, we apologize for the inconvenience.
We are checking this from our end and see if we can make that happen automatically.
