Sitemap Has Errors

Sitemap errors in Google Search Console mean Google encountered problems processing URLs in your submitted sitemap—preventing pages from being crawled, indexed, or ranked properly.

These errors can stem from malformed XML, unreachable URLs, server issues, or redirect chains, and if left unresolved, they directly harm your site's visibility in search results.

What is a Sitemap Error?

A sitemap error occurs when Google's crawler attempts to process your submitted XML sitemap but encounters issues that prevent successful parsing or URL validation. These errors are reported in Google Search Console under the "Sitemaps" section and indicate specific problems Google found while reading your sitemap file.

Common error types include:

HTTP errors: 404 (sitemap not found), 500 (server error), or 403 (access forbidden)
Parsing errors: Invalid XML syntax, missing required tags, or encoding issues
URL errors: URLs that redirect, return errors, or are blocked by robots.txt
Size violations: Sitemaps exceeding 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs per file

Your sitemap lives at a URL like https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml and must follow the Sitemap Protocol 0.9 standard. It uses XML markup with tags like <urlset>, <url>, <loc>, and <lastmod> to structure the list of pages.

When errors occur, Google may skip crawling URLs listed in that sitemap, delay indexing new content, or misallocate crawl budget to less important pages. The sitemap becomes unreliable as a crawling guide, forcing Google to rely solely on link discovery.

The SEO Impact

Sitemap errors create a cascade of technical SEO problems that directly reduce your organic traffic and rankings:

Incomplete Indexing: Pages listed in a broken sitemap may never get crawled. Research from Google Search Central shows that sites with sitemap errors experience 20-40% lower indexing rates for new content compared to error-free sites. If your latest blog posts, product launches, or landing pages aren't indexed, they can't rank or drive traffic.

Wasted Crawl Budget: Google allocates a finite "crawl budget"—the number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site per day. When your sitemap has errors, Google cannot efficiently prioritize which pages to crawl. This leads to low-priority pages (like old blog archives or admin URLs) consuming budget while high-value pages remain undiscovered.

Delayed Fresh Content Discovery: For time-sensitive content like news articles, seasonal products, or event pages, every hour of indexing delay translates to lost revenue. A working sitemap can reduce indexing time from days to hours. Sitemap errors eliminate this advantage entirely.

Lost Visibility in Search Console: Google Search Console relies on your sitemap to generate coverage reports, Core Web Vitals data, and mobile usability diagnostics. When errors prevent proper sitemap processing, you lose critical insights into indexing problems, structured data issues, and performance bottlenecks that could be tanking your rankings.

Competitive Disadvantage: Sites with clean, error-free sitemaps receive faster crawling, better indexing, and more accurate performance data. If your competitors have optimized sitemaps and you don't, they gain a measurable edge in search visibility and ranking velocity.

For e-commerce sites with thousands of product pages, or content sites publishing multiple posts per day, sitemap errors can result in significant lost traffic and revenue as pages remain invisible to search engines.

Common Causes

Server Misconfigurations: Your sitemap URL returns a 404 error because the file was moved during a site migration, the CMS changed the sitemap path, or the server is misconfigured. This often happens when switching hosting providers or updating CMS versions without verifying sitemap accessibility.

robots.txt Blocking: Your robots.txt file accidentally blocks Googlebot from accessing /sitemap.xml with a Disallow: /sitemap.xml rule. This is common when developers copy generic robots.txt templates without customizing them for their site structure.

Malformed XML Syntax: Sitemap generation plugins or custom scripts produce invalid XML due to special characters not being properly escaped (e.g., & should be &), missing XML declarations, or incorrect namespace definitions. Even a single syntax error can make the entire sitemap unparsable.

Oversized Sitemaps: Your sitemap exceeds Google's 50MB (uncompressed) or 50,000 URL limit. This happens frequently on large e-commerce sites or news platforms that auto-generate sitemaps without implementing sitemap index files to split URLs across multiple files.

Dead or Redirecting URLs: URLs listed in your sitemap return 404 errors, 301/302 redirects, or 5xx server errors. This occurs when products are discontinued, blog posts are deleted, or URLs change without updating the sitemap accordingly.

How Zignalify Detects This

Zignalify uses the Google Search Console API to retrieve the official error count and status for every sitemap submitted to your property. Our system authenticates via OAuth, calls the GSC Sitemaps endpoint, and parses the response to identify sitemaps with non-zero error counts.

Specifically, we check:

Error count: The errors field returned by the GSC API, which aggregates all detected issues
Sitemap path: The specific sitemap URL(s) affected, whether it's your main sitemap.xml or a nested sitemap like sitemap-posts.xml
Error severity: Whether errors prevent Google from processing any URLs or just a subset

Our detection logic iterates through all submitted sitemaps and filters for those where sitemap.errors > 0. If multiple sitemaps have errors, we calculate the total error count and report the aggregate number along with the specific sitemap paths affected.

This approach mirrors what you see in the Google Search Console UI under "Sitemaps," ensuring Zignalify's audit results are always in sync with Google's official diagnostics. We perform this check as a site-level audit, meaning it evaluates your entire domain rather than individual pages, since sitemap errors impact crawlability across your whole site.

Step-by-Step Fix

1. Identify the Specific Errors

Log in to Google Search Console and navigate to Sitemaps (under "Indexing"). Look for sitemaps with error counts greater than zero. Click on the sitemap to view detailed error messages, such as:

"Sitemap could not be read"
"Sitemap contains URLs blocked by robots.txt"
"Unsupported format"

2. Verify Sitemap Accessibility

Test if your sitemap is publicly accessible by visiting the URL directly in your browser (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). You should see XML content, not a 404 error or server error page.

Common fixes:

If you get a 404, check your CMS sitemap settings or regenerate the sitemap file
If you get a 403 or 500 error, contact your hosting provider to verify server permissions

3. Validate XML Syntax

Use a sitemap validator like XML-Sitemaps.com Validator to check for syntax errors. Common issues include:

Problem: Unescaped special characters

<!-- INCORRECT -->
<loc>https://example.com/product?id=123&color=red</loc>

<!-- CORRECT -->
<loc>https://example.com/product?id=123&amp;color=red</loc>

Problem: Missing XML declaration or namespace

<!-- INCORRECT -->
<urlset>
  <url><loc>https://example.com/</loc></url>
</urlset>

<!-- CORRECT -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url><loc>https://example.com/</loc></url>
</urlset>

4. Platform-Specific Fixes

For WordPress: If using Yoast SEO or Rank Math, go to the plugin's sitemap settings and click "Regenerate Sitemap." Check the "Advanced" tab to ensure problematic post types aren't included. If errors persist, disable/re-enable the sitemap feature or switch to an alternative plugin like All in One SEO.

For Shopify: Shopify auto-generates sitemaps at /sitemap.xml. If errors occur, it's usually due to excessive product variants or collections. Use a sitemap app like Smart SEO to customize which URLs are included and split large sitemaps into smaller index files.

For Next.js/React: If using next-sitemap, verify your configuration in next-sitemap.config.js:

module.exports = {
  siteUrl: "https://yourdomain.com",
  generateRobotsTxt: true,
  exclude: ["/admin", "/api/*"], // Exclude error-prone paths
  robotsTxtOptions: {
    policies: [{ userAgent: "*", allow: "/" }],
    additionalSitemaps: ["https://yourdomain.com/sitemap-0.xml"],
  },
};

Rebuild your site (npm run build) to regenerate sitemaps with the new config.

5. Fix robots.txt Blocking

Check your robots.txt file at https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Ensure it does not block your sitemap:

Problem:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /sitemap.xml

Solution:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

6. Split Oversized Sitemaps

If your sitemap exceeds 50,000 URLs or 50MB, create a sitemap index file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-31</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-31</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Submit the sitemap index URL (sitemap_index.xml) to GSC instead of individual sitemaps.

7. Resubmit to Google Search Console

After fixing errors, return to GSC, delete the old sitemap submission, and resubmit the corrected sitemap URL. Google will refetch it within minutes. Monitor the "Status" column—it should change from "Has errors" to "Success."

Best Practices

Exclude Non-Indexable URLs: Don't include URLs with noindex tags, login pages, thank-you pages, or duplicate content. These will generate errors and waste crawl budget.
Use Absolute URLs: Always use full URLs with protocol (e.g., https://example.com/page) instead of relative paths (/page). Relative URLs cause parsing errors.
Set Proper lastmod Dates: Use accurate <lastmod> timestamps in ISO 8601 format (e.g., 2026-01-31T14:30:00+00:00) to help Google prioritize crawling recently updated pages.
Compress Large Sitemaps: Use gzip compression to reduce file size. Google supports .xml.gz files, which load faster and reduce server bandwidth.
Monitor Errors Weekly: Check GSC's sitemap report at least weekly. Set up email alerts for new errors so you can fix them before they impact indexing.
Test After Major Changes: Regenerate and validate your sitemap after site migrations, CMS updates, or bulk content deletions to catch errors early.

FAQs

Q: How quickly will fixing sitemap errors improve my indexing?

Google typically refetches corrected sitemaps within 24-48 hours of resubmission. However, crawling and indexing the URLs inside can take days to weeks depending on your site's crawl budget and domain authority. Check the "Last read" date in GSC to confirm Google processed the fixed sitemap.

Q: Can I have multiple sitemaps with errors, or should I consolidate them?

You can have multiple sitemaps—it's actually recommended for large sites. However, fix errors in all of them individually rather than consolidating. Each sitemap serves a purpose (e.g., posts, products, pages), and merging them won't resolve underlying issues like malformed XML or blocked URLs.

Q: Will Google still crawl my site if my sitemap has errors?

Yes, Google will continue crawling via internal links, but sitemap errors reduce crawl efficiency and indexing speed. Your site won't disappear from search results, but new content will be discovered slower, and you'll lose valuable diagnostic data from Search Console. Fix errors promptly to maintain optimal crawlability.