sitemap not being read

Hi @jimh12345,

Can you let us know what URL you used to submit the sitemap to Google Search Console? Because of the site’s non-standard permalink structure, under the Sitemaps report, the sitemap URL should be “/index.php/sitemap_index.xml”. Is this correct?

By the way, you may want to consider removing the “/index.php/” from all of your permalinks at some point in the future. You can find more recommendations about permalink structure for SEO in this article: The perfect WordPress SEO permalink structure

Priscilla, thanks for replying.

It was submitted as https://jimhphoto.com/index.php/sitemap_index.xml.

I barely know what a permalink is – so I’ll start by reading that article.

I thought I accepted every default when setting up this blog, so my next question is: what is it about my site that’s non-standard?

The permalink structure you’re using is the non-standard, specifically the index.php. We recommend you please change the permalink structure and read the relevant article to understand the permalink structure better.

Is this the reason Google isn’t using the sitemap? Although the permalinks may not be optimal, they all seem to work.

Thanks,
Jim

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.

Hi @jimh12345

We are not sure if that is the reason as we would expect Google to crawl the sitemaps even with that but if you do not want it you should get it fixed. You may also need to go to Settings-General and verify that the right domain name is appearing in the Site and WordPress address fields. It should show: https://jimhphoto.com/. If you do not have those fields are they are unable to be modified your host provider can help.

Once you drop that index.php from your URLs, clear all your caching and then delete the sitemaps in Google (it will not harm the SEO) and resubmit them. This guide explains more: https://yoast.com/help/submit-sitemap-search-engines/#google

@jimh12345 No, it’s not likely that the use of a non-standard permalink structure is causing that. We were originally asking about the link structure because we were checking whether the correct URL had been used when submitting the sitemap, but you did confirm that it is correct.

I don’t know much about permalinks but found out that mine are of type PATHINFO as described here:

Using Permalinks

I haven’t found anything negative about PATHINFO links. They just seem to be a different way of constructing a permanent URL.

My site also has a subdomain for a SmugMug photography gallery. I’ve added that subdomain to GSC, and submitted its SmugMug-generated sitemaps, which are apparently used without issue. That’s why I’m trying to find out what’s different about the sitemap for my main site, and why Google claims it can’t use it.

I’ve posted this question in Google Search Community but not received any answer as of yet.

We can’t be certain that the non-standard permalinks could be the cause as to why the sitemaps aren’t being read. However, we did check on the /sitemap_index.xml as well as all of the individual sitemaps encased in it and they are all loading and updating as expected.

Could you try removing and resubmitting the sitemap? You can follow the steps here — https://yoast.com/help/submit-sitemap-search-engines/#google-remove

Yes, you could get more insight and suggestions from the Google Webmasters Help Community as well.

So far no replies from the Help Community. Searching there turned up posts on this exact problem going back years, many suggestions but nothing ever worked. I think that’s why I’m not getting any replies – it’s a dead end. Something in the Search Console, or the crawler, just doesn’t work and Google isn’t interested in fixing it.

I tried removing the sitemap and resubmitting – and immediately saw the same information restored, including the Last Read date from months ago, and the “couldn’t fetch”. So apparently you just get cached results and nothing changes.

I suppose one could try removing the sitemap and waiting a “very long time” before resubmitting it…

Hi @jimh12345 ,

It’s best to get the answer from Google Console Community. We’re leaving this post for 7 days just in case someone from the community also has suggestions.

I got a couple replies on the GSC community forum but they weren’t helpful. No one had an answer – the consensus seems to be that the displayed statuses are wrong, but there’s no way to know.

It’s frustrating that you can’t even delete a sitemap and try again. Maybe changing the name of the sitemap would cause the cached version to be ignored, but the plugin controls that filename.

Maybe a small site like mine doesn’t even benefit from a sitemap. When the crawler sees a sitemap with a small number of entries it might ignore it and just crawl the site directly.

Looks like I have to forget about sitemaps and try just submitting the URL for each new blog post directly.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.

Hello,

You might not need a sitemap if your website is relatively small, as discussed here. However, in general, it would still be good for you to be able to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console so that they would be able to understand the structuring of your website and all of its available links. We would recommend trying to get some more responses from the Google Webmaster Forum, or perhaps you could consider trying another sitemap or plugin if you still can’t get the sitemap to read.

Some responses on the Google forum but no answers. Trying a different plugin is a good suggestion, maybe that’s the only way to get rid of the cached version and whatever bad data Google has created around it.

Is there any way to force the Yoast plugin to use a different name for the sitemap file, or to do something different in formatting, so that Google sees it as a different map and drops the cached version?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by jimh12345.

@jimh12345 We’re sorry, no there is not a way to change the sitemap URL from sitemap_index.xml to another value.

However, it is possible to view the sitemap through the default WordPress permalink structure, using ?sitemap=1 instead of sitemap_index.xml. For example, you can view the Yoast sitemap at https://yoast.com/sitemap_index.xml, but it is also available through the URL of https://yoast.com/?sitemap=1

Hi @jimh12345 ,

We’re closing this thread as there seem no further questions from you. Please feel free to open a new thread should you have further concerns.