Hi Dmitry,
This appears to be either a temporary error at Google or a hosting configuration error.
For the latter, when dealing with NGINX, the host sets certain headers to the default well-known sitemap endpoints but defunct the .xml-endpoint for everything else. Yoast SEO’s and WordPress’s sitemap endpoints are among the most popular ones; thus, those get tested and (far too commonly) improperly patched. If you browse the configuration files, you may stumble upon the misconfiguration. For proper NGINX configurations with WordPress, see https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/recipes/wordpress/ or https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/server/web-server/nginx/.
But this is just a guess. If you want me to inspect the issue, please send me the URLs. Thank you!
Thread Starter
Dmitry
(@stranger03)
Looks like it’s a temporary error at Google. And it is only related to one of my sites. I backed up my site and decided to do a clean install of wordpress with a new database for the sake of experimentation. I uninstalled Akismet and Hello Dolly, selected “Post name” in Permalink Settings, then installed TSF plugin. I try again to add sitemap.xml in Google Search Console, same error: “Sitemap could not be read”.
Regarding Nginx configuration, I have my site on VPS and I have full control over hosting settings, I have no rules in Nginx configuration that could affect sitemap.xml.
There is another site with TSF plugin installed on the same VPS, its google sitemap reads without problems.
Hi Dmitry,
Thank you for the additional info.
You said that Google read the /sitemap_index.xml mirror endpoint well, which I think is notable.
Perhaps it is because you tested those files after the original /sitemap.xml endpoint yielded (temporary) errors; however, I don’t think the timeline matters, just that Google errored out on whatever file it was processing at the time.
In any case, please keep me posted if the error persists after tomorrow.
When it does, a link to the site in question is helpful in asserting differences (HTTP headers, minor/hidden content changes, etc.). If you’d like, you may share that confidentially via https://tsf.fyi/contact. Thank you!
Thread Starter
Dmitry
(@stranger03)
Hi Sybre!
I have sent you a message 4 days ago about a problem with the card sitemap.xml at your request, through this form: https://tsf.fyi/contact
I hope you received it.
Hi Dmitry!
Yes, I have received your message. Thank you!
I haven’t had a chance to examine it closely yet, but I’ll report back on my findings soon.
For what it is worth? I don’t think X-Robots-Tag: noindex; is benign (as I believe I’ve read elsewhere). Seemed to be to be the exact problem, as Google told me it was. In my case? It was apparently being added by the SEO plugin (The SEO Framework), which was auto-generating the sitemap. Because my site –– the-Circles.Club –– has a simple structure, I put a plain sitemap.xml file in WP home, turned off Sitemap Generation in the plugin, and that fixed it. As has been reported, you should be able to see all you need to see in the Chrome inspector; no need to bother Google every time … 😎
