Google can't process SmugMug sitemaps

jimh

I'm trapped in a loop and it's beeing going on for many months. Google never indexes anything but a handful of pages on my Smugmug site, and says it can't read the sitemaps.

Google Search Console gives me "Sitemap index processed successfully", but then "Couldn't fetch" on the contained sitemaps (ex: https://gallery.jimhphoto.com/sitemap-base.xml.gz). The map is there, the browser can read it fine.

So I resubmit the sitemap manually. After a day or two, GSC says the maps have been read and 600+ URLs discovered. And a couple of days later, the cycle repeats; "Couldn't fetch" and 0 URLs discovered.

I've posted this on the Search Console user forum but received no useful replies.

How can I get out of this? I have no control over the sitemaps SmugMug generates. If Google can't process them, isn't this something SmugMug needs to address?

rnrjosh

It's not uncommon to see the "couldn't fetch" error in Google Search Console for the sitemaps, though this is not related to the sitemaps themselves. This looks to be a long standing bug with Google Search Console, though it typically resolves itself in a few days or weeks. It may be helpful to try resubmitting the sitemap URL without the .gz bit at the end of the sitemap URL, though you may still see the "couldn't fetch" warning message when you do that.

Also note that even if you submit a valid sitemap via Google Search Console, that's not a guarantee that Google will index every URL in the sitemap. Google determines on its own what content/pages it decides to index, though you can also use Google Search Console's tools to request indexing of specific URLs.