Google Console Error – Couldn’t Fetch – Sitemap could not be read

Hello @trendwp

We checked your sitemap_index.xml and couldn’t find anything unusual that could prevent Google from fetching it. We recommend doing the following:

1. Clear all type of caches (theme, server, CDN such as Cloudflare, etc). If you are not sure how to clear your server caching, please speak with your host provider.

2. Make sure to disable other sitemap plugins and remove any sitemap files via FTP.

3. Delete and resubmit sitemap into the Google search console.

Give it 24 to 28 hours before checking the status again.

Thank you jerparx, we have completed all the above, verifying that there is no caching by our host provider (and we don’t use a CDN or Cloudflare).

We’ve resubmitted to google and will check back in after the weekend and let you know.

After attempting all the above, and resubmitting (and waiting), we still are getting the same messages after adding the site map.

Hi trendwp,

Thanks for getting back to us and we’re sorry the sitemap hasn’t been accepted yet.

Can you try editing your robots.txt file according to our recommendation here https://yoast.com/wordpress-robots-txt-example/?

Once you’ve edited the robots.txt file, can you re-try deleting the current sitemap, clearing your cache, and resubmitting the sitemap?

We look forward to your response.

Thanks for the reply. I’d actually already updated our robots.txt to your example before I posted the initial help request.

https://www.danbobst.com/robots.txt

Content:

User-Agent: *

I tested your site’s sitemap in various tools and cannot determine why Google cannot read the sitemap. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide any more information as to why they cannot read the sitemap. Please contact Google for further assistance here: https://support.google.com/

Please note that in Google’s support forum there are quite a few users (with and without Yoast SEO) seeing this error. Some say it resolves itself within a few days. Others say it works in the old Search Console. But many have no resolution and suspect it’s a bug in the new Search Console.

Thanks for the information. I’d reached the same stopping point as you, so I appreciate you verifying everything for me as well. I just wanted to be extra sure we weren’t doing anything wrong with this new sitemap / wordpress before reaching out to google.

An update for you anyone reading this later on… After the latest update to google search console, that added the domain property – all of the sitemaps were picked up without error, without me making any further changes.

Looks like there was nothing wrong with the sitemaps or my setup.

Thanks for all the help.

• This reply was modified 6 years ago by trendwp.