Reading Your Sitemap Report in Google Search Console

You submitted your sitemap to Google Search Console. Now you are looking at the Sitemaps report and trying to figure out what it all means. The report is straightforward once you know what each element represents, but it can be confusing the first time, especially when something goes wrong.

This guide walks through every part of the report, what each status means, and how to fix the common problems. For the broader sitemap overview, see our XML sitemap guide. If you have not submitted a sitemap yet, start with how to submit a sitemap to Google.

Finding the Report

Log into Google Search Console at search.google.com/search-console. Select your property. In the left sidebar, look under "Indexing" and click "Sitemaps."

If you have a Domain property, it covers all URL variations (http, https, www, non-www). If you have a URL-prefix property, it only covers the specific prefix you added. Make sure you are looking at the right property for your sitemap.

The Submitted Sitemaps Table

The main section of the report shows a table of all sitemaps you have submitted. Each row has several columns.

Sitemap URL

The URL you submitted. This is the full path, like https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml or https://yoursite.com/sitemap-index.xml.

If you submitted a sitemap index, it appears as one entry. Google discovers and processes all child sitemaps within the index automatically, but they are not listed as separate rows in this table.

Type

Shows whether the submitted file is a "Sitemap" (a regular sitemap) or "Sitemap index" (a file that references other sitemaps). Google handles both, but the processing is slightly different. A sitemap index is processed first to discover child sitemaps, then each child is fetched and processed individually.

Last read

The date Google last fetched your sitemap. This is not the date Google last crawled the URLs inside the sitemap. It is the date Google downloaded the sitemap file itself.

Google re-fetches submitted sitemaps on its own schedule. You do not control how often this happens. For active sites, it is typically every few days to once a week. For less active sites, it might be less frequent.

If the "Last read" date is very old (months ago), it could mean Google has deprioritized your sitemap. This is usually not a problem for small sites but can indicate issues for large sites.

Status

This is the most important column. It tells you whether Google successfully processed your sitemap.

Sitemap Statuses Explained

Success

Green checkmark. Google fetched and processed your sitemap without errors. This is what you want to see.

"Success" means Google could read the file and extract the URLs. It does not mean Google indexed all the URLs. It does not mean the URLs are error-free. It just means the sitemap file itself is valid and accessible.

Has errors

Yellow warning. Google fetched the sitemap but found problems. Click on the sitemap URL to see the specific errors.

Common errors include:

Invalid URL. A URL in the sitemap is malformed. Check for missing protocols, spaces in URLs, or incorrect encoding.

URLs not accessible. Some URLs in the sitemap return 4xx or 5xx status codes. Google fetched the sitemap file successfully but could not access some of the pages listed in it.

Invalid XML. The sitemap has XML syntax errors. Missing closing tags, incorrect nesting, or encoding issues. Use an XML validator to find and fix these.

Unsupported format. The file is not valid XML or does not conform to the sitemap protocol. This can happen if the file is actually HTML being served at the sitemap URL.

You can still have a "Has errors" status while many of your URLs are being crawled and indexed normally. The errors affect the specific problematic URLs, not the entire sitemap.

Couldn't fetch

Red error. Google tried to access your sitemap URL and failed entirely. The file was not returned.

This means one of these things:

The URL is wrong. Typo in the URL, wrong protocol (http vs https), wrong path. Double-check the exact URL.

The file does not exist. You deleted or moved the sitemap without updating Search Console. Make sure the file is actually at the URL you submitted.

The server returned an error. A 500 error, timeout, or other server-side issue prevented Google from downloading the file. Check your server logs for the time around the "Last read" date.

robots.txt is blocking access. If your robots.txt disallows access to the path where your sitemap lives, Google cannot fetch it. Sitemaps should never be in a disallowed path.

Authentication required. If the sitemap is behind basic auth, a login wall, or IP restrictions, Google cannot access it. The sitemap must be publicly accessible.

Pending

Google received your submission and has not yet processed it. This usually resolves within a few minutes to a few hours. If it stays "Pending" for more than 24 hours, there may be an issue with the sitemap URL or your server.

Discovered URLs vs Indexed URLs

The Sitemaps report shows how many URLs Google discovered in your sitemap. But "discovered" does not mean "indexed."

Discovered URLs

This is the count of URLs Google found in your sitemap file. If your sitemap lists 500 URLs, this number should be approximately 500 (it may differ slightly if Google encounters parsing issues with some entries).

Finding indexed URL counts

The Sitemaps report itself does not show an indexed URL count directly. To see how many of your sitemap URLs are actually in Google's index, go to the "Pages" report (under Indexing > Pages). This report shows all URLs Google knows about, categorized by status: indexed, crawled but not indexed, not found, excluded, etc.

The gap is normal

Having fewer indexed URLs than discovered URLs is completely normal. Google does not index every URL it discovers. Pages may be excluded because:

• They are duplicates of other pages (canonical pointing elsewhere)
• They have a noindex directive
• Google considers them low quality or thin content
• They redirect to other URLs
• They are blocked by robots.txt (discovered via sitemap but not crawlable)
• Google simply has not gotten around to crawling them yet

A significant gap (less than 50% indexed) on a mature site warrants investigation. A moderate gap on a new or large site is expected.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Sitemap shows "Success" but pages are not indexed

This is the most common concern. The sitemap is fine. Google read it. But pages are not appearing in search results.

Check the Pages report for specific exclusion reasons. Common culprits:

• "Crawled - currently not indexed" -- Google crawled the page but chose not to index it. Usually a content quality issue.
• "Discovered - currently not indexed" -- Google knows the URL exists but has not crawled it yet. Be patient, or improve internal linking to the page.
• "Duplicate without user-selected canonical" -- Google thinks this page is a duplicate and picked a different URL as the canonical.
• "Excluded by noindex tag" -- The page has a noindex directive. Remove it if you want the page indexed.

Sitemap URL count is wrong

If your sitemap has 500 URLs but Google reports discovering only 300, the sitemap may have XML errors that prevent Google from parsing all entries. Validate your sitemap XML. Check for entries after a malformed URL that might cause the parser to stop.

Also check for URLs that Google considers duplicates within the sitemap (same URL with and without trailing slash, http and https versions).

"Last read" date is very old

Google re-fetches sitemaps on its own schedule. You can force a re-fetch by resubmitting the sitemap in Search Console (delete and re-add, or just click submit again). You can also use the ping method to notify Google that the sitemap has been updated.

Multiple sitemaps with overlapping URLs

If you have submitted multiple sitemaps that contain some of the same URLs, Google handles this fine. It deduplicates internally. However, it is cleaner to keep URLs in only one sitemap to avoid confusion in your reporting.

What the Pages Report Tells You (That the Sitemap Report Does Not)

The Sitemaps report tells you whether Google can read your sitemap. The Pages report (Indexing > Pages) tells you what Google is doing with the URLs it found.

How to use them together

1. Submit your sitemap and wait for a "Success" status
2. Go to the Pages report and filter by your sitemap URL (there is a filter for this)
3. Review the status categories for your sitemap URLs specifically
4. Address issues in order of impact: fix errors first, then investigate exclusions

This filtered view is powerful because it lets you see exactly how Google is handling the pages you explicitly told it about via your sitemap.

When to Delete and Resubmit

Delete and resubmit when:

• You moved your sitemap to a new URL
• The old sitemap URL no longer works
• You want to reset the error state after fixing issues (sometimes the report caches old errors)

Do not delete and resubmit when:

• You just want Google to re-crawl your pages (resubmitting does not trigger crawling)
• The sitemap shows "Success" but pages are not indexed (the issue is not with the sitemap)
• You are impatient -- give Google time to process

Monitoring Over Time

Check the Sitemaps report periodically, especially after:

• Major site changes or migrations
• CMS updates or plugin changes that might affect sitemap generation
• Adding large amounts of new content
• Changes to your robots.txt that might affect sitemap accessibility

A healthy Sitemaps report shows "Success" for all submitted sitemaps, a "Last read" date within the past week, and a discovered URL count that matches your expectations.

For related troubleshooting, see sitemap errors and fixes and how to check a sitemap.

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References

• Google Search Central: Sitemap Report
• Google Search Central: Submit Your Sitemap
• Sitemaps.org Protocol Specification