Make the sitemap reachable on WordPress
Why it matters
The sitemap address that robots.txt names, or the default one, cannot be fetched, so crawlers cannot use it. The address may be wrong, or the file may be blocked or failing.
The fix
- Open the sitemap address from robots.txt. For the core sitemap use /wp-sitemap.xml; for an SEO plugin sitemap use the address that plugin shows in its settings. Update robots.txt if it names an old address.
- If it errors, open Settings, Reading and clear Discourage search engines from indexing this site (ticking it turns the core sitemap off), save Settings, Permalinks to refresh rewrite rules, and check that no security or cache plugin blocks it.
Related
- Reported by the robots.txt and sitemap check
- Add a robots.txt file
- Fix the server error on robots.txt
- Fix the syntax of robots.txt
- Shrink the robots.txt file
- Allow search engines in robots.txt
- Publish an XML sitemap
- List the sitemap in robots.txt
- Fix the sitemap format
- Put URLs into the sitemap
- Split the sitemap into several files
- Remove URLs from other domains in the sitemap
Scan your domain to see whether this applies to you.