Fix for “Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page” in Google Search Console

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Lets say you tried to submit a sitemap in Google Search Console and you got an error saying “Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead”.

So what is happening here and what is the solution?

Acceptable formats for Google Search Console

Remember that you can’t just submit any link to the Google Search Console as a Sitemap.

In fact, you might see a message that says “Sitemap is HTML” or “Sitemap can be read, but it has errors”

This means that you have not submitted a sitemap in once of the acceptable formats. This is a reminder that HTML is not one of the acceptable formats for Sitemaps.

The only acceptable formats are:

  • XML
  • RSS, mRSS and Atom 1.0
  • Text file

Creating sitemaps in WordPress for Google Search Console

There is a very simple fix for that.

You can use any of the famous SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO or Rank Math to generate a free Google Search Console compatible XML site for your WordPress website.

You can also create a text sitemap for your WordPress website using this plugin

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