If you’ve submitted your sitemap in Google Search Console and see the message “Sitemap could not be read”, it means Googlebot wasn’t able to access or interpret the file.
This issue is common for WordPress websites using SEO plugins like Rank Math or Yoast, especially when server or configuration settings interfere with Google’s crawler.
Below, we’ll walk through the most likely causes and fixes.
The first step is to ensure the sitemap URL you submitted is accessible.
You can test this by opening it directly in your browser. It should load a clean XML file showing a list of sitemap indexes or URLs.
If you see an error such as “Incorrect HTTP header content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 (expected: application/xml)”, the sitemap might be served with the wrong file type. This can happen due to caching or an incorrect server configuration.
If using Rank Math or Yoast, resave your permalink settings in Settings → Permalinks → Save Changes to regenerate rewrite rules
Disable any caching temporarily and recheck your sitemap
Your robots.txt file should allow access to the sitemap and the relevant directories.
You can test it using the Google robots.txt Tester.
Example of a correct robots.txt file:
User-Agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
If the sitemap is blocked, Googlebot will not be able to read it.
Sometimes, the sitemap contains invalid XML, incorrect encoding, or non-canonical URLs.
You can check your sitemap’s format using an XML Sitemap Validator.
Ensure:
If you’re hosting on GoDaddy, or another cPanel-based host, the .htaccess file controls URL rewriting and access permissions.
If this file is missing, WordPress cannot properly generate or serve sitemap URLs.
To fix:
Without it, sitemaps may return incorrect headers or become inaccessible to Googlebot.
Caching plugins and CDNs (like Cloudflare) may serve outdated versions of your sitemap.
If you recently made changes, purge all caches before resubmitting your sitemap.
Check that the server response header for your sitemap shows:
content-type: application/xml; charset=UTF-8
Once all the above checks are complete:
If you’ve tried all the above and your sitemap still cannot be read, the problem may be on the hosting side.
Some security configurations block Googlebot or rewrite file headers incorrectly.
Ask your host to check the firewall and ensure Googlebot is not being blocked.
In GoDaddy, you can review this under Security Settings → Firewall → Access Control.
Other hosts like SiteGround, Bluehost, or Hostinger have similar settings under their site tools or cPanel.
If everything appears correct but Search Console still shows “Couldn’t fetch”, check your server logs for crawl errors or 403/404 responses.
You can also use the URL Inspection Tool in Search Console to confirm Googlebot can access the sitemap.
Did this help you solve your sitemap issue? Send us a message below or ask a question.
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Hi !
My website, high-flight.org, is hosted by WordPress.com. It was successfully indexed by Google from 2020 to 2025/2026 but it is not anymore with errors like "no information available for that page". I checked everything on WordPress.com side (robots.txt, sitemap_index.xml...), spent some sixteen hours chatting with WP, including ten hours with WP human support. Everything was controlled ten times. All WP plugins deactivated end reactivated. Firewall wide open : no explanation found. Then I followed ALL your testing procedure without ANY bug detected. But whenever I submit my https://high-flight.org/sitemap_index.xml to Google Search Console, it invariably answers "an error occured when accessing your sitemap. Please check that your sitemap is not blocked by Google".
I am getting nuts.
Thank you for your attention...
Pierre BACARA
Hi Pierre,
It looks like in Yoast your sitemap file is blocked, please add it to the allow section and try submit the sitemap agiain.
Additionally if it is a new site, you will need to wait some time.