Google Search Console cannot read sitemap although public XML fetch succeeds

We are investigating Google Search Console sitemap fetch failures affecting five Vercel-hosted sites: dishrated.xyz, frontandfound.xyz, habitgarden.xyz, panimate.xyz and shellhaul.xyz. Each sitemap is at /sitemap.xml.

On October 12, 2026, ordinary HTTPS GET requests to all five sitemaps returned 200 with application/xml and valid XML. All robots.txt endpoints returned 200 and advertise the sitemap. ShellHaul’s GSC detail at that time showed Last read 10/12/26, zero discovered pages and “Sitemap could not be read.” The interface exposed no exact failure time or more specific error. These observations are dated October 12, not a fresh October 22 status check.

At that check, ShellHaul had no custom firewall rules or IP blocks; Bot Protection and Attack Mode were off. Successful Google Inspection Tool fetches for two other affected sites do not establish that Google’s sitemap service fetched or processed those URLs.

Our Hobby plan’s available request logs could not recover the original October 7 failures. We have not disabled protections, created crawler bypass rules, or assumed that a spoofed Googlebot user agent proves genuine Google crawler access.

What supported diagnostics can distinguish an actual edge/DNS/TLS failure from Google sitemap processing status, and capture a real Google sitemap request within the available retention? We would appreciate guidance on the exact evidence to collect before making changes.

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To clarify: this is a Google Search Console sitemap retrieval/processing support question, not a security vulnerability, exploit, or abuse report. The firewall settings were included only as diagnostic context.

We need help determining why GSC reports “Sitemap could not be read” while ordinary requests return valid XML with HTTP 200, and how to capture and correlate an actual Google sitemap-service request on Vercel. Could a human please review this as a sitemap/CDN delivery issue and advise which evidence to collect?

Fresh evidence from Search Console on October 22: ShellHaul’s https://shellhaul.xyz/sitemap.txt shows Success, last read October 21, with 6 discovered pages. Its /sitemap.xml entry still shows Unknown / Couldn’t fetch and 0 discovered pages. The text sitemap therefore provides a working discovery path; the remaining question is specific to the XML endpoint or its processing/status. This does not prove that every URL is indexed.

Vercel Staff

Do your sites have robots.txt file blocking Googlebot? That could block GSC from accessing the sitemap.

There are some other causes Google has shared, including low crawl demand which can cause it to display "Couldn't fetch." It could also show "Unknown" or "not fetched yet" for similar reasons. (source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7451001?hl=en#fetch_errors&zippy=%2Csitemap-parsing-errors)

I've also seen some sites run into trouble because of how the redirect to or from www. is configured. And make sure your sitemaps match what you've entered in GSC