Hello,
I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing issues with your sitemap. I understand how frustrating this can be, but don’t worry, we’ll get this sorted out for you.
First, let’s check if your sitemap is accessible using the httpstatus.io tool. Please enter your sitemap URL (https://www.yourdomain.com`) and check the status to identify any issues preventing your sitemap from being accessed by the Googlebot.
If the sitemap is being cached, you need to exclude it from caching. You can go through our tutorial on how to exclude Sitemaps from caching.
If the issue persists, please ensure that your sitemap is not being blocked by robots.txt. You can check and update your robots.txt file to ensure that the sitemap is not blocked.
If you’ve already tried these steps, please let us know, and we’ll continue troubleshooting to resolve this issue for you. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
Sources:
Rank Math Sitemap Issues and Their Fixes » Rank Math
Indexed, Not Submitted in Sitemap – Google Search Console » Rank Math
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math
Using Video Sitemaps in Rank Math
the httpstatus.io tool. shows my website should be OK, I have excluded it from my caching plugin, and it does not look like it is being blocked by a robots.txt file
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Please follow the steps below to see if that works for you.
#1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
#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/
#3. If the above steps don’t seem to work, kindly apply the following filter code to your site.
add_filter( 'rank_math/sitemap/enable_caching', '__return_false');
Here’s how you can add filter/hook to your WordPress site:
https://rankmath.com/kb/wordpress-hooks-actions-filters/
If the issue persists, please follow the guideline to check if any of your plugin/themes is conflicting with Rank Math: https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/
Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
when i try to flush the cache- I do not have the “links per sitemap” option on my sitenmap settings tab. I am on the free account- it is not showing….
maybe this is why- can you please advise?
also when I click on the pages sitemap it seems to work…but not the sitemap index.
I am just starting to build my website so perhaps there is a reason why there?
Ok I tried all the steps
1. flushing the cache- like I said I do not have the “links per sitemap” option on my sitenmap settings tab. I am on the free account if that matters. I did go an press save in the permalinks section
2. I excluded the sitemap on my WP super cache plugin
3. I added the filter using the snippet plugin
still didn’t work
4. I installed the health check plugin and went through the process- here is what I found:
A. When I use the default theme the sitemap index goes to a 404 page. When I use Astra it goes back to the issue I had before that states “This page doesn’t seem to exist.
It looks like the link pointing here was faulty. Maybe try searching?”
B. All the other plugins seem to not change anything- with the standard theme all plugins threw the 404 error
Please let me know how to go from here- it seems Astra may be an issue; however even with the default theme I still get a 404 error so there is still a problem.
Any thoughts on how to clear the cache if I don’t have the “links per sitemap” section?
Hello,
Apologies for the inconvenience.
Please note that some options are only available when you enable the Advanced Mode in Rank Math. If it’s not showing, you must have chosen to use Easy Mode.
You can follow the steps in this link to switch to Advanced Mode:
https://rankmath.com/kb/advanced-mode/
Also, your site seems new and you don’t have any published pages/posts. Please try publishing a page and ensure that they are set to index:
https://rankmath.com/kb/url-not-in-sitemap/
Let us know how this goes.
Yay! It is working now, thank you for your help!
Hello,
We are super happy that this resolved your issue. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.
If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.
If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
Thank you.
