The Search Console Sitemaps report and its errors

This guide is built from Search Console Help, Sitemaps report, and Google Search Central's sitemaps overview, Build and submit a sitemap and sitemap index pages. What goes inside a sitemap is covered in our robots.txt and XML sitemaps guide, and whether the listed pages got indexed is covered in our Page indexing report guide. This page is about the report in between.

Do you need the report?

Not always. Google's help page says that if your site runs on a hosting service such as Squarespace or Wix, the service probably manages your sitemap, and you don't need to make your own or use this report. It also says a small site, "about 500 pages or fewer", where every page can be reached by links from the home page, probably doesn't need a sitemap or this report either.

The report earns its place when you run your own sitemap: a custom-built site, a large site, or one with pages that are hard to reach through links. Even then, Google's sitemap docs say "submitting a sitemap is merely a hint: it doesn't guarantee that Google will download the sitemap or use the sitemap for crawling URLs on the site."

Submitting a sitemap

"Submitting" only tells Google where the file lives; the help page is plain that "You cannot actually upload a sitemap to Google." The steps Google gives:

1. Post the sitemap on your site in an accepted format. Google recommends the site root, unless your hosting service says otherwise.
2. Check that Googlebot can reach it. The sitemap "must not be blocked by any login requirements". Run a live test in URL Inspection and check that Page fetch is "Successful".
3. Open the Sitemaps report, paste the same URL into the Add a new sitemap box and click Submit.
4. If the status is not Success, click the row to see the details.

You need owner permission on the property to submit through the report. Without it, Google says you can list the sitemap in your robots.txt file instead; our users and permissions guide explains the roles. There is also a Search Console Sitemaps API, which Google says "provides all the same functionality and information as this report."

Google fetches a new sitemap straight away, but crawling the URLs in it takes time, and "it is possible that not all URLs in a sitemap will be crawled, depending on the site size, activity, traffic, and so on."

Reading the report: status and columns

The main table shows the last request for each sitemap you submitted. Each row has these columns:

• Sitemap URL. The exact URL you submitted. "Redirects are not followed", so submit the final address of the file.
• Type. Sitemap (XML or text), Sitemap index, RSS, Atom, or Unknown, which means the file is not a known sitemap type or has not been processed yet.
• Submitted and Last read. When you last submitted it, and when Google last fetched it. Last read only appears if Google could fetch the file.
• Status. The result of the latest crawl (see the table below).
• Discovered pages and Discovered videos. How many URLs Google parsed from the file. For an index, the page count covers all child sitemaps, and duplicates count once.

Status	What Google says it means	What happens to the URLs
Success	The sitemap was loaded and processed with no errors.	All URLs are queued for crawling.
Has errors	The file was fetched but has one or more errors.	URLs that parsed without errors are still queued.
Couldn't fetch	Google could not retrieve the file.	Nothing is read until the fetch works.

Discovered pages is not an indexed count. Google says "There is no guarantee that a page URL discovered in a sitemap has been or will be crawled or indexed by Google." To see how many of those pages are indexed, use See index coverage in the sitemap's row, or filter the Page indexing report by that sitemap. For videos, the same applies with the Video indexing report.

A few limits are worth knowing. The report can show at most 1,000 submitted requests. You can submit image, video or news URLs, but "the report doesn't currently show any data for those types of URLs." And once Google has read a sitemap, a later failure doesn't make it forget what it already learned.

Why a sitemap isn't listed

Google gives two reasons. First, the sitemap belongs to another property: sitemaps submitted for http://example.com won't appear under https://example.com or a www version, so check you are in the right property. Second, the report "shows only sitemaps that were submitted using this report or the API". A sitemap Google found through your robots.txt can be used without ever appearing here. You can still submit it to see its status.

Couldn't fetch: fetch errors

Couldn't fetch means Google could not get the file at all. The reasons Google lists:

• robots.txt blocks it. "Google respects robots.txt when fetching sitemaps." Remove the rule.
• A manual action. "Sitemaps are not read when a site has an unresolved manual action." See our manual actions guide.
• The wrong URL, giving a 404. Open the address in your browser.
• A general error, such as the server being unavailable. Some are transient, so Google suggests waiting to see if later attempts still fail.
• Low crawl demand for the sitemap. Google ties crawl demand to the quality of the site's content.

To debug, click the sitemap, click the error name for details, then paste the sitemap URL into URL Inspection and run a live test. Under Page availability you want Crawl allowed? = "Yes" and Page fetch = "Successful". If a fetch keeps failing, Google retries for a few days and then stops, so fix the cause and resubmit.

Has errors: the common parsing errors

Has errors means Google read the file but some of it was wrong. Click the sitemap to see the list; the help page describes over thirty errors, many of them for video and news sitemaps. The ones a business site usually meets:

• URLs not followed. Often too many redirects or relative links. Google suggests listing the final URLs, and using absolute URLs rather than relative ones.
• URL not allowed and Path mismatch. The sitemap lists URLs above its own folder, or on a different host or protocol, such as https URLs in an http sitemap, or www URLs in a sitemap at the non-www address.
• Invalid date. Dates must use W3C Datetime, such as 2005-02-21. A time is optional, "but if you do specify a time, you must also specify a time zone."
• Invalid URL and Parsing error. Spaces, quotes or unescaped characters. Google says any data values, including URLs, "must use entity escape codes" for characters such as & and <.
• Too many URLs or Sitemap file size error. More than 50,000 URLs, or over 50MB uncompressed. Split the file and use an index.
• Unsupported format and Incorrect namespace. A wrong header or namespace. Curly quotes pasted from a word processor also break XML attributes.
• Empty sitemap and HTTP error. No URLs in the file, or a 400-level response when Google downloaded it.
• Temporary error. A problem on Google's side. Usually you don't need to resubmit; "If the error still exists after several hours, try resubmitting your sitemap."
• Leading whitespace. Blank space before the XML declaration. Google says this "won't prevent Google from processing your sitemap".

Errors about single URLs, such as URLs not accessible, don't stop Google reading the rest of the file. Inspect the listed URLs in URL Inspection to see what Google gets back.

Sitemap index files

A sitemap index is "a sitemap of sitemaps": one file that lists your other sitemaps, so you can submit them in one go. Google's rules, from its sitemap index page and the report's error list:

• The listed sitemaps must be on the same site, and in the same directory as the index or lower.
• An index may have up to 50,000 loc tags. More than that gives a Too many sitemaps error.
• An index can't list other index files. That gives "Nested sitemap indexes".
• Give each listed sitemap its full URL. A bare file name is looked for in the index's own folder, and if it isn't there you get an incomplete URL error.
• You can submit up to 500 sitemap index files for each site in your Search Console account.

In the report, an index shows Discovered pages for all its child sitemaps, and See index coverage includes the child sitemaps' URLs that were already crawled.

Resubmitting and removing a sitemap

After a successful read, Google recrawls the sitemap on its own schedule, separate from the site crawl. Resubmit when you make big changes or after you fix an error. Otherwise, Google says to let it follow its regular schedule.

To remove a sitemap, click it in the table, open the more options menu on its details page and click Remove sitemap. This only takes it out of the report: "Google won't forget the sitemap or any URLs listed in it." To stop Google visiting the sitemap or its URLs, Google lists three options: block them with robots.txt, delete the file or page from your site, or add a noindex rule. For a sitemap file that must be a response header; for a page, a meta tag or header works. To hide a page from results quickly, see our Removals tool guide.

Our routine for a business site

This part is our own practice, not Google guidance. On sites we build, we submit one sitemap URL per property: the exact final address, with no redirect. We also add a Sitemap line to robots.txt so other search engines find it. After launch or a migration, we check that the status says Success and that Discovered pages matches the number of pages we meant to list. If it doesn't, the sitemap generator is usually including redirected or noindexed pages, or leaving pages out. After that we look at the Page indexing report filtered by the sitemap rather than the Sitemaps report itself, because that is where indexing problems show. For the wider setup, see our Search Console basics guide and our website migration guide.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my sitemap say Couldn't fetch?

Google could not retrieve the file. Google lists a robots.txt block, an unresolved manual action, a wrong URL giving a 404, a general error such as the server being unavailable, and low crawl demand. Test the sitemap URL with a live test in URL Inspection, fix the cause and resubmit.

Does Discovered pages mean my pages are indexed?

No. It is the number of page URLs Google parsed from the sitemap. Google says there is no guarantee those pages have been or will be crawled or indexed. Filter the Page indexing report by the sitemap to see how many are indexed.

Do I need to submit a sitemap at all?

Not always. Google says sites on hosting services such as Squarespace or Wix probably have the sitemap managed for them, and small sites of about 500 pages or fewer, with every page linked from the home page, probably don't need one.

Does removing a sitemap from the report stop Google crawling those URLs?

No. Google won't forget the sitemap or its URLs. To stop visits, block them with robots.txt, delete the file or pages, or use noindex, which for a sitemap file has to be a response header.

Why isn't my sitemap in the report?

The report only lists sitemaps submitted through it or the API, in the current property. A sitemap Google found through robots.txt isn't shown, and one submitted under http or non-www won't appear under https or www.

For more on Search Console, see our guides to Crawl stats, URL Inspection and the Performance report. For Bing, see Bing Webmaster Tools.