Sitemap.xml couldn't fetch: Do I have too many products (100)?

[arturotheburro7]

Greetings,

I've read every sitemap issue thread I could regarding "couldn't fetch". To summarize the solutions:

• Have one of every page (pages, blogs, collections and products)
• Use domain property in GSC 
• Wait 2 weeks

Those did not work for us. After a lot of mucking with the system I've finally got the sitemap.xml file so it now contains all four categories (pages, blogs, collections and products). Sidenote: when I created my first page it kept putting it in https://jindosofla.myshopify.com/sitemap_pages.xml instead of https://jindosofla.myshopify.com/sitemap_pages_1.xml. Not sure if that matters. But the main sitemap only contained https://jindosofla.myshopify.com/sitemap_pages_1.xml which had no pages at the time. In any case its in what I assume is the right place now.

We are using the default shopify subdomain, jindosofla.myshopify.com, and not a custom domain. We are still getting this error in GSC:

Here is our sitemap: https://jindosofla.myshopify.com/sitemap.xml

Here is the products sub sitemap: https://jindosofla.myshopify.com/sitemap_products_1.xml?from=4252921987119&to=4364195233839

We have 100 products listed in our products sub sitemap, could that be the issue why it can't fetch? Is that too many?

[Josh_Uebergang]

The number of products is not an issue. 100 is little. Have clients with far larger SKUs that we're able to submit sitemaps for with no problem.

Of the 100s of sitemaps I've submitted as part of Google Analytics or SEO work, we've never submitted one for a store with a myshopify.com domain. So I don't know if using that myshopify.com is the problem, but it is otherwise not recommended if you're serious about looking serious. Using a custom domain, setting that up in GSC, then submitting a sitemap for it may fix it.

[troyshu · Accepted solution]

I had this exact same problem with a client recently, here are the steps of what worked, we had to do both of them:

1. Install a custom domain to your site first, then after you can reach the site map at your new domain yourself, submit the site map again to Google! As the commenter above said, you’ll want a custom domain anyways to improve the professionalism of your store.

2. After submitting your sitemap now (using a custom domain), you still might see the “Could Not Fetch” error on Google Search Console—we did at this stage. Try writing a short blog post and publishing (you can delete it later, it’s only temporary). This worked for us, and the reason I’m thinking it did is because Shopify includes a link to your News blog by default in the sitemap but somehow Google can’t read the sitemap if there aren’t any posts and the News blog is an empty page. OR it could be because the new blog post changes the sitemap so it “forces” Google to re-read it, so this still might work for you because you already have blog posts. That’s my guess. Not very scientific but if you search the Shopify forums this “solution” has worked for others in the past too. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like there’s an official Shopify approved solution or any indication from them why exactly the error might happen. Hopefully just adding a custom domain solves it for you though!

Good luck!

[arturotheburro7]

Ah yes thanks both of you.

That indeed solved the problem. The sitemap can now be found by google. For anyone else experiencing this issue - you need your own domain. The default shopify subdomain will not integrate with Google Search Console. Also added a blog post, page, etc.

Thanks again.

[tranquilgardenr]

Click to expand...

.myshopify.com resulted in a “couldn’t fetch” error.

Using my own tranquilgardener.com domain resulted in “Success”.

Don’t know if which domain was primary matters, but for this my .com domain was primary. 

[SeanMcEl]

Hi guys

Thanks for your suggestions. We have 4 sites, all of which are pretty much identical in pages, blogs, theme etc:

• cannyco.com
• cannyco.com.au
• cannyco.eu
• cannyco.us

Google fetches the sitemap of the first three no problem but not the last one, although it can be seen fine here: https://www.cannyco.us/sitemap.xml. We have blog posts on there as suggested above, custom domain etc. I'm now kind of tearing my hair out with this as I simply don't understand why it fetches the sitemap of the first three sites but not the last one.

Any ideas from the experts are more than welcome!

[pupclubus]

Our shop's domain is also xxxxxx.us and we are having the same issue as @SeanMcEl above. Google search console is giving "Couldn't fetch" error. 

Note: Tried adding a blog post as the thread solution suggested. But no luck for us.

Any idea from the experts?

Thanks! 

[SeanMcEl]

Still nothing working for our .us domain. The .com, .eu and .com.au all work fine and, frustratingly, have exactly the same configuration. I just wonder if it has something to to with the .us domain name extension....

[crofty1878]

Im also having this problem, Tried blog article but still nothing...? @SeanMcEl 

[Liz1221]

We have the same issues... Our .com shopify can be fetched by Google. But .us account has problems fetching the sitemap...  Does it work for you now? Any ideas that could help? 

[Ajoeb0492]

I have a solution where it will literally work with any domain name including .us .eu and everything.

Go first to YOURDOMAIN.US/sitemap.xml

Manually copy the links you see there into google search console.

For example: https://DOMAIN.US/sitemap_pages_1.xml

[devatttd]

This might work for the blogs and collections, but it won't work for the products which have a dynamic parameter?