XF 2.2 sitemap issue?

[Garfield™]

When I look at the google panel, I see a failed to fetch warning, how can I solve this?


whereas I have access to my sitemap file;

https://wmtr.net/sitemap.php

 

[benFF]

I have exactly the same issue, hoping someone else has some input!

 

[nodle]

Also the same, I have tried everything.

 

[Garfield™]

I am getting this error in the new forum with a high number of urls, I do not experience such a problem in the forums I created from scratch, strange...

 

[smallwheels]

Suffering from the same issue. My forum is just about a bit more than 2 months old and over time I've tried countless times to bring Google to recognize the sitemap w/o any success. The sitemap is there and it is accessible as well. Bing reads it w/o issues and constantly fetches the actual version. Only google refuses it which leads to only very few URLs (that I manually fed into the search console) indexed by Google (currently 6 URLs indexed by Google vs. ~180 URLs indexed by Bing).

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[nodle]

Suffering from the same issue. My forum is just about a bit more than 2 months old and over time I've tried countless times to bring Google to recognize the sitemap w/o any success. The sitemap is there and it is accessible as well. Bing reads it w/o issues and constantly fetches the actual version. Only google refuses it which leads to only very few URLs (that I manually fed into the search console) indexed by Google (currently 6 URLs indexed by Google vs. ~180 URLs indexed by Bing).

Any help would be appreciated!

This is identical to a T of what is happening with mine as well. I have tried everything; from reading everything online and trying fixes, to deleting/re-creating the site map, running SEO checks, etc. I don't even know what else to try so I basically have given up.

 

[Garfield™]

this issue is caused by url count and occurs on forums restored from backup

 

[TPerry]

this issue is caused by url count and occurs on forums restored from backup

Well, wouldn't that be expected if your backup was older than the sitemap that Google had used and the data was older?

 

[Garfield™]

google looks at it like this, how can a new website have 50,000 urls at once? I reduced my url count, deleted my topics, then the sitemap was read without any problems.

 

[Garfield™]

In the future, maybe he will read it or not, I don't know, I solved it this way

 

[TPerry]

google looks at it like this, how can a new website have 50,000 urls at once? I reduced my url count, deleted my topics, then the sitemap was read without any problems.

I don't really think they looked at it like that.. more likely, they looked at it as if this is factual, we will slowly phase in the search as we might overload their system.

 

[smallwheels]

this issue is caused by url count and occurs on forums restored from backup

My forum ist new and was never restored from a backup and my URL count is atm low, in the 3-digit-area.

 

[Garfield™]

My forum ist new and was never restored from a backup.

how many urls in sitemap file?

 

[smallwheels]

how many urls in sitemap file?

currently 210.

 

[benFF]

this issue is caused by url count and occurs on forums restored from backup

I don't think so.

My vbulletin sitemap (the old one) has nearly twice as many urls as my xenforo one and that reads in fine.

 

[smallwheels]

Has anybody found a solution for this? I am still suffering from the issue.

My forum is still small and nothing has changed in regards of Google ignoring the sitemap according do Google Search Console:

• Forum is 6 month old
• currently 300 Members, 350 threads, 5600 Postings
• the content is very little "noise" and mostly high quality / relevant (it is a technical forum)

Bing reads the sitemap regularly w/o issues and states currently it has discovered 446 URLs and indexed 403 pages.

Google on the other hand refuses to read the sitemap, still claims "could not fetch" in Search Console. No matter how often I push the sitemap and no matter if it is sitemap.xml, sitemap.php or whatever else may be possible.
Google has in opposite to Bing just 42 URLs indexed and 36 not indexed. Almost all of those URLs have been submitted manually by me, one after the other, over the last months.

Xenforo is running the actual version (2.2.12). Auto-sitemap-generation and -submitting are set to "on", all SEO-features that Xenforo offers in the options are checked.

Opening the sitemap in a Browser shows no issues, using a sitemap validator shows no issues as well.

Still Google ignores my forum and my sitemap and is no help at all.

The topic has been risen in the forum on several occacions, a bug that was opened has been closed as "no bug", several people seem to suffer from the same issue with absolutely no solution in sight and - after trying everything - not even an idea for a possible solution.

 

[Foynat]

Same here. Very frustrating! Does anyone have a solution for this or is every single XF forum running with unreadable sitemaps?

 

[smallwheels]

is every single XF forum running with unreadable sitemaps?

Some seem to have no issues while others do and probably a large majority does not use google search console (or not look into it) and is thus not aware if there are issues for them or not.

 

[smallwheels]

As the failure "could not fetch" did not seem very specific to me I experimented a bit.

1. create a xml-sitemap manually
saved the sitemap.xml from Xenforo as a file locally, inspected it for the correct syntax, than renamed it to mitesap.xml, uploaded it to the server, checked if I could see it in the browser, then put the url into the sitemap part of google search console.
Outcome: could not fetch

2. create a txt-sitemap manually
created a very basic txt-sitemap with just a couple of URLs, following advice from Googles help pages in the search-console. Named it "fomap.txt", put it on the server, checked it via browser, submitted it in search console-
Outcome: could not fetch

So it seems neither to be a creation-issue nor a syntax issue.

3. Checking the sitemap via the URL-Inspector.
the help-pages hint at using the URL-Inspector if you have issues submitting your sitemap:

• Couldn't fetch: The sitemap could not be fetched for some reason. To learn why not, run a live test on the sitemap with the URL Inspection tool:
  1. Copy the path from the Sitemaps report, to ensure you're testing the exact sitemap URL that you submitted to Google.
  2. Click Live test in the URL Inspection tool. This should give you information about whether the sitemap exists and can be fetched by Google.

So I did. Outcome: Page fetch successul.


So now I've (again) run out of ideas.

 

[nodle]

Just wanted to update this for those that are wondering. Before coming back to Xenforo last October my sitemap was working fine. After I switched it never worked and I tried everything under the sun to fix it. I just switched back to IPS 2 days ago and the first day my sitemap worked perfectly. So, it seems like software related to me.