@jelliott2014 We understand that you are receiving a status of ‘Couldn’t Fetch’ in Google Search Console, and that the sitemap generated by the Yoast SEO plugin at https://www.saanichsommeliers.ca/sitemap_index.xml returns a 404 Not Found status.
In order to resolve this, we’d recommend to perform the following steps:
- Go to Admin > Yoast SEO > Settings > General > Site features and confirm you have enabled the sitemap feature
- Go to Admin > Settings > Permalinks and click ‘Save Changes’ (without altering anything)
- Confirm you have published content that can appear in search results
- Ask your web host to add the required rules to your Apache or NGINX server
If the issue remains, we often see problems occur in combination with other plugins or themes. The fastest way to rule out any conflict is to deactivate all non-Yoast plugins and switch to a standard theme like Twenty Twenty-Two.
Please test this on your development or staging site if you have one. If not, we recommend using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. This plugin has a troubleshooting mode, which does not affect normal visitors to your site. If you’re unfamiliar with checking for conflicts, we’d like to point you to a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process: How to check for plugin conflicts
If you feel uncomfortable doing this yourself or if this does not solve your issue, our Yoast SEO Premium plugin comes with one year of (technical) support.
Regarding Google Search Console, unfortunately they don’t provide any more information as to why they cannot read the sitemap.
- Does the sitemap load correctly in your browser?
- Are you submitting the correct sitemap URL of
sitemap_index.xml?
- Does Google see the sitemap when checking the URL in the Structured Data Testing Tool?
- Does the URL inspection tool‘s live test show any errors with the sitemap URL? If yes, please resolve the errors.
- Did you submit the sitemap to the Google Search Console profile that matches the preferred URL format including http(s) and www or non-www?
If you’ve checked everything above, please contact Google for further assistance here.
