For quite a while Google Search Console gave me problems with Yoast Sitemaps. I stalled on figuring out why, but I finally did!
Do any WordPress users not use Yoast for their SEO plugin of choice? It’s solid, even the free version has lots of great tools. How many use Yoast Sitemaps? Very handy, however, I always had Google Search Console bark at me when submitting them. It would keep saying I had empty sitemaps and I never got why. They validated as well formed sitemaps, they work in Bing Webmasters Tools, they load in a browser…so what’s the problem?
I found out!
What is Blocking Your Sitemaps?
It turns out, this is another fun side-affect of using All In One WP Security & Firewall plugin. I discussed a few days ago about how sometimes this security plugin works too good. Therefore, one has to be careful for unintended consequences to using some of features.
What fixed the issue for me was this:
- Login in to the administration of your site.
- Click on “WP Security” in the menu sidebar.
- Click on the “Firewall” submenu item.
- Go to the “Internet Bots” tab on that page.
- Uncheck the “Block Fake Googlebots” checkbox.
- Save the changes.
- Resubmit your sitemaps to Google Search Console.
From there your sitemaps should be accepted by Google Search Console. So, if that doesn’t fix it, look at other plugins that may be doing the same thing. But, one could venture a guess any other security/firewall plugins likely have the same sort of options to look for.
This isn’t an issue with Bing Webmasters Tools, I never understood why. However, now it makes sense, as it’s a “fake googlebots” specific feature.
Hopefully this helps some of you solve this somewhat frustrating issue. I looked all over the internet to no avail. Finally, I stumbled accross a discussion that had the answer. Gotta love the internet. Look long enough, you can find the answer to anything!