Yoast sitemap submission returns “Empty Sitemap Error” in GSC

  • Resolved oleksandrmelnychenko

    (@oleksandrmelnychenko)


    3 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hi,

    The sitemaps for my wordpress site are generated by Yoast Free plugin. More than a week ago, GSC started to show error in the status of those sitemaps:

    Sitemap can be read, but has errors
    Empty Sitemap
    Your Sitemap does not contain any URLs. Please validate and resubmit your Sitemap.

    However, the sitemaps are valid.

    Below are list of actions that I have already tried

    • Used?https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/validate-xml-sitemap.html?to verify that that the sitemap is valid
    • Did a live test for the URL in search console and verified that the page can be fetched and indexed
    • Reviewed the code on the sitemap for any errors and couldn’t find any
    • Purged cache from CloudFlare and WordPress
    • Purged browser cache and deleted cookies
    • Resubmitted sitemap URL for the past 7+ days, error returned the same ‘Empty sitemap: Your Sitemap does not contain any URLs. Please validate and resubmit your Sitemap.’
    • Deactivated and reactivated Yoast SEO plugin
    • Created a robots.txt file to purposely add sitemap url into the ‘Allow’ section

    The sitemap that I cannot index is https://www.corporateservices.com/sitemap_index.xml along with all the sitemaps listed in the index.

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    Regards,

    Alex

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Plugin Support Maybellyne

    (@maybellyne)

    Hello @oleksandrmelnychenko,

    Thanks for reaching out about your sitemap. There’s nothing wrong with the sitemap or the robots.txt file. Do you have a security plugin active, like WordFence, All In One WP Security, WP Security plugin?etc? Kindly check that you don’t have a rule to Block Fake Googlebots.

    Thread Starter oleksandrmelnychenko

    (@oleksandrmelnychenko)

    Thanks for the prompt reply. Yes, we use All in One WP Security. I disabled this rule two days ago and situation is still the same. After that I repeated all the actions described above.

    Do you have any other assumptions or suggestions what could cause this?

    Best regards,

    Alex

    Plugin Support Mushrit Shabnam

    (@611shabnam)

    Hi @oleksandrmelnychenko

    Since you have recently removed the rules that blocked googlebots, can you kindly delete the existing sitemap and resubmit the sitemap again?

    Please remove the existing sitemaps in Google Search Console and resubmit the sitemap. You only need to submit the sitemap index i.e /sitemap_index.xml, as Google Search Console will automatically parse the individual sub-sitemaps.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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