4 Solutions to Sitemap Couldn't Fetch Issue

When Google Search Console says your Sitemap status “couldn’t fetch” and the type is “unknown” after using custom domain to your BlogSpot, it can be frustrating. While there are some potential solutions to solve this issue, the last one is the best shot. Before digging into the solution, let’s have some basic knowledge about sitemap.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap, according to Google, is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationship between them. Wikipedia defines a sitemap as a list of pages of a web site within a domain. These two sitemap definition stand from different perspective. Google looks a sitemap as a file while Wikipedia looks a sitemap as the content of the file. Are they different? Of course, they are not. However, since Google understands a sitemap as a file, it determines what type of file can be submitted through the search console, the XML file.

So, a sitemap is a file that contains almost everything you have in your website under a certain domain. I said “almost” because different sitemap file includes different things. For example, if you look at the content of your sitemap.xml, assuming you are using BlogSpot, you will only see list of pages’ URLs while if you read your atom.xml, the content looks different. Some other sitemap files include all the images and videos you uploaded on your blog while some others don’t; it depends on the sitemap generator used.

What is a sitemap for?

A sitemap functions to tell search engines what pages or files should be indexed and also provides valuable information about these files, said Google. A sitemap is usually used to submit multiple URLs for indexing at once because if you have 100 pages in your blog, you wouldn’t submit them one by one for crawling and indexing. So, Google, for example, uses your sitemap as “reference” to crawl and index the URLs in your blog.

What if my sitemap can’t be fetched by Google?

That’s the problem!

Google always visits and crawls all blogs as long as they are online, accessible, and not blocked by anything like robots.txt or meta robots. Although you don’t submit your sitemap or even have no property registered in the search console, your blog’s URLs are still able to be crawled and indexed, as long as they fulfill the basic Google requirements.

Nevertheless, having your blog’s sitemap submitted, the crawling process goes faster and the indexing can be tracked. You would prefer to submit your sitemap if you visit this page, don’t you?

Why my sitemap couldn’t be fetched?

There are some reasons why your sitemap file couldn’t be fetched by the Google Search Console. Here are some of them.

Your blog server is down

If this happens, the search console cannot access your sitemap file. Therefore, even if the sitemap URL is correct, it is not accessible.

Your sitemap URL is incorrect

If you submit an incorrect sitemap URL, the search console cannot access the sitemap either. So, you may need to double-check if the sitemap URL you submit is correct. The easiest way is to copy and paste it on the browser and see if it can be found.

Your sitemap file type is unsupported

Google search console prefers XML sitemap rather than TXT or HTML. You can submit sitemap.xml, atom.xml, or rss.xml to the search console and it should work fine.

Your sitemap is not hosted within your domain

See, the search console only accepts a sitemap URL and not a sitemap file. It means that your sitemap file must be hosted somewhere before you submit to the search console. Fortunately, BlogSpot has its default sitemap URL so you can use that.

You just used a custom domain to your BlogSpot

This is your problem, right? It happen mostly with eu.org domain when there is nothing wrong with your sitemap but the search console shows a very frustrating sitemap status, couldn’t fetch. So, what can you do? Here we go.

Solutions to Sitemap Status: Couldn’t Fetch

I did a small “research” to find out a solution to this issue as I will share with you below. However, I also found, in a page of Google Support, that it is a bug in the new search console. It’s also said by a Platinum Product Expert that:

Frankly it’s mostly like a bug. The new console sometimes shows “Pending” as “Couldn’t fetch” incorrectly.

But you don’t want to wait for the search console to fix the bug, do you?

Solution #1. Remove and Re-add your property in the search console

If you just used a custom domain to your BlogSpot, your URLs changed and must be redirected; you did this on your Blogger dashboard. However, the redirection should be applied in the search console as well while there is no way to do that. Therefore, you need to add a new property to GSC correctly (URL Prefix Property) and try to submit your sitemap by using your custom domain URL. In case you have done so but the issue persists, try again and pay close attention to the use of HTTPS rather than HTTP. I found this solution from Gapunyakode, an Indonesian blog.

Solution #2. Add extra backslash in the sitemap URL

It is weird but reported works for many bloggers. I found this solution from Contenteum. It tells you to add an extra forward slash just before the sitemap file name. Since you registered your blog as URL Prefix property, you will have to add just a file name and its extension like sitemap.xml in the box. What you need to do is just add a backslash (/) before the sitemap.xml (/sitemap.xml). This technique, no matter how weird it is, but is reported as a working technique by many bloggers.

Solution #3. Wait for a day or two, or week

If you are not in hurry, you can wait for a day or two after submitting your sitemap although it shows error. You can return to the search console and see if your sitemap has been successfully fetched. Many bloggers are impatient and it is fully understandable. What if it does not work even after a week?

Solution #4. Do not submit your sitemap, ping it instead!

Keep your blog registered in the search console but no need to submit your sitemap. If you have submitted one and get that couldn’t fetch status, just leave it as it is. What you should do next is to ping your blog sitemap so the search console grabs it and put it in the queue.

To ping your blog sitemap, you need to copy your sitemap URL and put it at the end of the following URL:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=yoursitemapURLhere

Paste the complete URL to your browser and press Enter. Voila! Your sitemap has been successfully submitted to the Google Search Console even when it is not listed in the sitemap section. You’ve never thought about it, have you?

You need to save the URL above and do the ping whenever you update your blog. By doing so, the search console knows that there are new URLs in your blog to be crawled and indexed.