Sitemap could not be read in Search Console: causes and fixes

"Couldn't fetch" and "Sitemap could not be read" mean Google did not get a usable file from the address you submitted. The usual causes are a wrong URL (404), a robots.txt rule that blocks the file, a server that answers with an error, or a file that is not valid XML. Open the URL yourself first: what you see there points to the cause in most cases.

Check the file in two minutes

1. Open the exact sitemap URL in a browser. You should see XML or a download of the file, not a page with your site design.
2. Check the status code and the content type from a terminal. You want 200 and an XML type:

curl -sI https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
# HTTP/2 200
# content-type: application/xml

3. In Search Console, inspect the sitemap URL with the URL Inspection tool and run a live test. Google's own help says "Page fetch" should read Successful before you submit.
4. Run the file through the free sitemap validator, which checks the XML, the limits and the status of each URL.

The causes, in the order to check them

1. The URL is wrong (404)

Google reports this as a wrong URL: sitemap not found at the address provided. Typical slips are a missing www, http instead of https, a different folder, or a file that was never uploaded. Fix the address or upload the file, then resubmit.

2. robots.txt blocks the file

Google respects robots.txt when it fetches a sitemap. A rule like this is enough to cause the error:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /sitemap.xml

Remove the rule, or test the sitemap URL with the robots.txt tester. Broad rules such as Disallow: /, left over from a staging site, are a common reason.

3. The server returns an error or is unavailable

A 5xx response, a timeout or a firewall that blocks Googlebot leads to the general error. Google notes that some of these are transient: wait and see whether later attempts hit the same error. If it persists, check the server logs for requests from Googlebot and make sure a security plugin, CDN or rate limiter is not blocking them. Confirm the file is not behind a login.

4. The address returns HTML instead of XML

A site can answer a missing sitemap with its home page or a custom error page. If the URL shows your site design, Google cannot parse it as a sitemap, and you get a format error such as "Unsupported format". Check that the sitemap really exists at that path and that no rewrite rule or caching layer replaces it.

5. The XML is broken or has the wrong declaration

Google lists common causes of an unreadable file: a wrong header, a namespace other than http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9, curly quotes around attributes (word processors insert them), and special characters that are not escaped. In a URL, & must be written as &. Save the file as UTF-8 in a plain-text editor, as the sitemap documentation asks. Whitespace before the XML declaration is reported but tolerated.

6. The compressed file is damaged

A .xml.gz that was compressed twice, renamed without being compressed, or cut off during upload gives a compression error. Recompress the original with gzip, upload it again and resubmit. Download the file from your own site and open it to prove it works.

7. The file is too big

A sitemap can hold 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Past either limit, Google reports a size or URL-count error. Split the file and list the parts in a sitemap index. The 50,000-URL limit guide explains how.

8. Causes outside the file

Google also lists a manual action on the site, which stops sitemaps from being read until you resolve it, and low crawl demand, which it ties to the quality of the site's content. Neither is fixed by editing the sitemap.

After you fix it

Resubmit the sitemap in the report. If the cause was a temporary server problem, you often do not need to. The submit guide covers the steps, and the Search Console errors guide covers every other message in the report.