0:00 Introduction - Fix Sitemap Couldn't Be Fetched in Google Search Console
0:55 - Check Sitemap in SEO Plugin
1:43 - Fix robots.txt file
2:35 - Submit sitemap success
When you try to submit a sitemap in Google Search console, you get this message.
Sitemap couldn't be fetched.
This means your sitemap can't be read by Google Search Console.
When this happens, the search engines won't effectively crawl your site.
This usually affects your page rankings in the search engines.
So, if you get this sitemap error message in the Google Search Console, you must fix it immediately.
Here's how to do it.
First, we want to see if the sitemap is properly generated.
To do this, we want to go to our site's WordPress dashboard.
Once there, you want to go to the Yoast SEO plugin.
If you don't have this plugin, you may want to install it if you don't any other SEO plugin.
In Yoast, we want to go to Settings.
Scroll down to XML Sitemaps under APIs.
Make sure the Enable feature is ticked.
Next, click on View the XML Sitemap.
You should be able to view your sitemap.
Now, we want to get the sitemap URL and try adding it to Google Search Console again.
Again, we get the couldn't fetch error message.
Let's fix the problem.
Go back to Yoast on your WordPress dashboard.
This time, click on Tools.
Then click on file editor.
In robots.txt, check whether your sitemap URL is included.
We don't find the sitemap URL generated by Yoast.
Instead, we find many old sitemap URLs. These URLs can't be read by search console.
So, we're going to delete them.
Next, we are going to insert the current sitemap URL.
Do this under the Allow.
The format is sitemap plus colon plus your sitemap URL.
Next, click on Save changes to robots.txt.
Now go back to search console and add the sitemap URL.
This time the sitemap has been successfully added.
So, the next time you get a can't fetch sitemap error, check your robots.txt file.
Remove any old sitemap URLs and add your current URL.
Now, go ahead and give the steps a try.
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MGIEhfDKkGM/maxresdefault.jpg)