In Google search console if you have submitted sitemap and click on submit and you get an error message “xml sitemap couldn’t fetch error” then you don’t need to worry regarding this error and you can easily resolve this issue of xml sitemap couldn’t fetch error in Google Search Console and this means that google couldnt fetch your sitemap file at present. So, let’s dive in deeper and fix this issue with the sitemap file in search console.
In search console you can see errors with the sitemap file if the sitemap file is not valid or if any general http error with sitemap file or sitemap file is blocked for google.
Step 1: Login to Search console and select your website property in search console.
Note: If your website is https then you should use httpS version property in search console.
Step 2: Now, click on sitemap section on left side menu
Step 3: On right site click on sitemap file that you have submitted in google search console
Step 4: Click on Open sitemap on top and open sitemap file in browser.
Step 5: If you are able to view sitemap file properly without any issue then you don’t need to worry and if sitemap url is throwing 404 or 5xx level error then you need to resolved this issue and make sure sitemap file is valid with 200 ok response and submit sitemap file in search console.
Now, go ahead and submit the sitemap in the search console again and wait for google to fetch the sitemap file and discover urls and crawl them for indexing.
Also Read:
1) How to Fix Pages Not Indexed Status URL in Google Search Console
2) Fix and Recover Google Rankings Dropped Overnight Guide
3) 10 Common Reasons Why Page Indexed in Google but not Ranking?
4) How to Fix Page With Redirect Error in Search Console
5) How to Fix Discovered currently not indexed in Search Console
When you setup your website, most of the time there will be an issue with domain versions not redirection to httpS final version url and you need to setup 301 redirect from all version of domain to final httpS version of your website, like www, http, httpS, non-www domain version to final httpS version.
Sometimes, http redirection to httpS gets failed and then you will get xml sitemap couldn’t fetch error in Google Search Console general http error and other errors like 5xx etc.
Sometimes, your hosting provider may block google sitemap files and this can happen and to check whether google is able to crawl a sitemap file, you need to go to the rich result test and drop the sitemap url in there and perform the test.
Step 1: Open Search Console and copy sitemap url of your website
Step 2: Click on top search url inspection tool and paste the sitemap url file and hit enter.
Step 3: Wait for google to fetch sitemap file and once done, you need to click on live url test and see the results.
Step 4: If you don’t see any error in live url test of your sitemap file, then you don’t have any issue with sitemap file and wait for google to crawl sitemap file.
If you see xml sitemap couldn’t fetch error in Google Search Console then don’t panic, this means that google hasn’t crawled your sitemap file yet and google doesn’t look for sitemap file every time you update it and google checks for the first time when google notices it. Only submit sitemap when its changed or updated and make sure you provide last modified date in sitemap file.
If you have submitted your sitemap file recently then you can expect to see sitemap coulldnt fetch – meaning sitemap file is not yet processed or crawled by google and this does not show any affect on your website. It doesnt affect anything or change anything on yoru website.
Google is just letting you that sitemap couldnt fetch – if google encounters an error when fetching sitemap file, then it will show you error like general http error or 5xxx error or any other error respectively with sitemap file in google search console.
No! Sitemap file doesnt affect anything with regards to indexing or crawling or any kind of ranking drops and if your website ranking is dropped then you need to check with website ranking drop reasons and ranking updates by google – this will cause your website ranking drop from Google search.
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