my Sitemap showing in /sitemap_index.xml but still showing “Couldn’t fetch”

Hello,

We apologize for the inconvenience you’re experiencing with your sitemap. The “Couldn’t fetch” error in Google Search Console can be quite frustrating. We appreciate you reaching out to us for assistance.

To resolve this issue, we recommend following a few troubleshooting steps. First, you can try renaming the sitemap file as per the instructions in this knowledgebase article. If that doesn’t work, you can also validate your sitemap using the Validate XML Sitemap tool as outlined in the same article.

If the issue persists after trying these steps, please feel free to reach out to our support team directly from the knowledgebase article, and we’ll be more than happy to assist you further.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

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

Hello,

We’ve checked your post sitemaps, and they contain 2000 URLs.

Please note that Google crawls small-sized sitemaps faster. With this in mind, Rank math uses the links per sitemap limit to break down sitemaps into smaller parts. You can also check Google’s guidelines for sitemaps:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/sitemaps/build-sitemap

In this case, you may set your Links per sitemap between 200 and 500 as recommended in Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > General.

Once done, remove your submitted sitemaps and resubmit your main sitemap only.

Hope that helps.

Hello,

Thank you for getting back to us.

As far as we can tell, the sitemap at /sitemap_index.xml as well as /?sitemap=1 are both working fine without any issues. To move forward with this, can you please send us a screenshot of the error on Google Search Console showing the full URL of the sitemap you submitted? Here’s an example of what we need:

and

and

We look forward to hearing back from you.

Hello,

Your sitemaps are working and validating fine, and there is no issue with them.

Also, 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.