Page sitemap seen as HTML by Google - Support

Resolved Anonymous
8 months ago

Rank Math free

Dear RankMath support team,

We recently launched a new webshop using your SEO plugin.
https://lauthentiqueacademie.com/

Unfortunately we are facing an issue with the generated sitemap.
https://lauthentiqueacademie.com/sitemap_index.xml

The site map is valid when using the online validator tools. We also tried validating the page sitemap giving the issue below. When looking at the xml content, there is no HTML tag to be found.

>> Screenshot : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v05aAsJyTDfDJorkGOCxryXhx_MQ4hzS/view?usp=drive_link

Still we are facing the issue displayed below.

>> Screenshot : https://drive.google.com/file/d/18A5NsxlnGP3WbKi_5kRFGX43Yxhrblps/view?usp=drive_link

Solutions found online didn’t solve the page sitemap problem
Here is what we tried https://wordpress.org/support/topic/problem-with-html-sitemap/

We have flushed the sitemap cache, cleared the full website and server cache (including CDN) but still no difference.

We are using LightSpeedCache and applied the caching exclusion as recommended here
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/?_gl=1*1bpgytr*_ga*MjEwNDU1MDQ1MS4xNzA5OTk1NzM4*_ga_WTF2SQ5LGQ*MTcxNTc4MDg4NC40LjEuMTcxNTc4MDkwNC40MC4wLjA.

We also tried adding the PHP filter option.

All of these actions resulted in the same error.

The page sitemap is a key content that needs to be indexed asap.

What can we do to have this solved? It seems to be a sort of persistant cache issue somewhere. Is there a way to force Google to refresh it?

Deleting the sitemap and resubmitting still results in the same problem. The page sitemap also doesn’t seem to be read again as this is the only one staying on a past date.

Thanks for your help.
Best regards,

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

RankBot
8 months ago
Hello,

I apologize for the issue you are facing with your page sitemap being seen as HTML by Google. Thank you for providing detailed information and the screenshots.

To address this problem, let’s try the following steps:
1. Check for Plugin Conflict: Please ensure there are no conflicts with other plugins affecting the sitemap. You can use the Health Check plugin to identify any conflicts.
2. Exclude Sitemap from Caching: Since you are using LiteSpeedCache, ensure that the sitemap is correctly excluded from caching. You can follow the instructions provided in this link.
3. Force Google to Refresh: Unfortunately, we cannot force Google to refresh the sitemap directly. However, you can resubmit the sitemap in Google Search Console and request a reindexing of your website to prompt Google to crawl and index the updated sitemap.
If these steps do not resolve the issue, please let us know, and we will further investigate the problem to assist you effectively.

Best regards,

Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Why the Sitemap_Index.xml is Throwing a 404 Error » Rank Math
Great
8 months ago

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math support.

We’re unable to access the screenshots you shared. Please modify the sharing settings and set to be viewable by anyone with the link

Also, we checked your website and sitemaps and we didn’t find any issue with it. Please check the sitemap again and share a screenshot of the issue you’re referring to

We are looking forward to hearing back from you.

Reinelle
7 months, 4 weeks ago

Hello,

In this case, please remove your sitemap_index.xml, then submit all your sub-sitemaps instead (post-sitemap.xml, page-sitemap.xml, etc.)

Once done, give Google some time to update the Last read column for your submitted sitemaps.

Looking forward to helping you.

Anonymous
7 months, 4 weeks ago

Rank Math free

Will give this a shot and keep you posted.
Thanks,
Greg

Rakibuzzaman Siam
7 months, 4 weeks ago

Hello,

Sure! Let us know how it goes.

Meanwhile, please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.

Looking forward to helping you.

Thank you.

Anonymous
7 months, 4 weeks ago

Rank Math free

After updating one of the pages and regenerating the permalinks, the indexation of the pages sitemap finally went through without aving to submit the sitemaps one by one.

Case closed. Thanks for your help.

Rakibuzzaman Siam
7 months, 4 weeks ago

Hello,

We are glad that everything has been sorted out.

Please feel free to reach out to us again in case you need any other assistance.

We are here to help.

Thank you.

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

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