What does "Sitemap could not be read" mean in Google Search Console?
Submitting & Indexing
This error means Google was unable to fetch or parse your sitemap file. Common causes:
- Sitemap URL returns a 404 or 500 error - Check the URL is accessible in a browser
- Invalid XML formatting - Validate your XML at a tool like xml-sitemaps.com
- Blocked by robots.txt - Ensure your sitemap URL isn't disallowed
- Server timeout - The server took too long to respond when Google tried to fetch it
- Wrong content type - The server must serve it with an XML content type
After fixing the issue, resubmit the sitemap URL in Search Console.
How AutoPSEO helps
AutoPSEO’s Indexing Monitor watches up to 1,800 URLs per site with the URL Inspection API, flags pages that drop out of the index or have not been crawled for 120+ days, and can push changed URLs to Bing, Yandex and Naver through IndexNow. Alerts arrive by email, Slack, Teams or webhook.
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