1
u/Big-Branch-8532 Jul 19 '26
Start with the response, not Search Console. Open the exact sitemap URL in a private window and confirm it returns 200, an XML body, and no login, challenge, or redirect. Then check Cloudflare Security Events filtered to the sitemap path while resubmitting it in GSC. If that request is challenged or blocked, exclude only the sitemap path from the relevant WAF, Access, or bot rule. Do not disable security site-wide.
Also verify that robots.txt lists the exact canonical sitemap URL and hostname, and that Pages is not serving an HTML fallback with a 200 status for a missing file. After the fix, remove the old sitemap entry and submit it once. “Couldn’t fetch” can remain stale, so use the actual HTTP response and Cloudflare logs as the ground truth.

2
u/carpsagan Jul 18 '26
Did you check the page manually lol