The following guide is to help clients understand sitemap error status.
The status for sitemaps can be seen in the Sitemap settings.
Why does this happen?
An error status for a sitemap happens when Indexing Insight could not download URLs from a selected XML sitemap.
The most common errors are below:
Error | Description |
Not Found | The sitemap returned a 404 HTTP status code. |
Sitemap is empty | The sitemap returned a 200 HTTP status code but we did not find any URLs within the file. |
Forbidden | The sitemap returned a 403 HTTP status code. |
Internal Server Error | The sitemap returned a 500 HTTP status code. |
1) Sitemap is Forbidden
Indexing Insight uses a scheduler to fetch and download your sitemaps.
Our tool can be blocked from accessing your sitemap URLs due to security measures by your DevOps team. As we are not given sufficient permission to access the URLs.
When we are blocked the server returns a 403 HTTP status code.
If our tool is blocked from accessing the URL this means it will impact the number of URLs our tool can download and monitor.
How to fix this problem
Check to make sure Indexing Insight is whitelisted.
Learn more about How to whitelist Indexing Insight.
2) Sitemap is Not Found
Indexing Insight fetched a URL but it returned a 404 status code or 500 status code.
This means that the selected sitemap cannot be fetched by our tool as it no longer exists on your server.
How to fix this problem
Check to make sure that the sitemap files are live (return a 200 Status Code).
If pages are not being downloaded always recommend checking that:
XML sitemaps in Google Search Console are live (return a 200 Status Code).
Sitemap index file in Google Search Console include the right XML sitemaps.
3) Sitemap Empty
Our tool has fetched your sitemap URL but it did not contain any URLs.
Always check to make sure that the selected sitemaps or sitemap index files contain sitemap URLs that are live (return a 200 Status Code).
Although the number of XML sitemaps does not impact our tool, we cannot download any URLs from sitemaps that return a 404 error.
How to fix this problem
Check to make sure selected sitemaps are important.
Always check to make sure that the selected sitemaps or sitemap index contain pages that you want to monitor.
Although the number of XML sitemaps does not impact our tool, we cannot download any URLs from empty sitemaps.
If you're seeing a lot of empty sitemaps we recommend checking that:
XML sitemaps in Google Search Console are live (return a 200 Status Code).
XML sitemaps contain the pages you want to monitor.
XML sitemaps are correctly formatted.