Sitemap is served but cannot be parsed
The discovered sitemap response could not be parsed as a sitemap document.
Why it matters
A sitemap that returns a response but cannot be parsed does not give crawlers usable URL discovery data. This differs from a sitemap that is absent, empty, or stale.
How ShipReady detects it
What it inspects
ShipReady uses a sitemap URL declared in robots.txt when available, otherwise the default sitemap location. It reads a successfully fetched sitemap body, including supported gzip content, and parses its XML root and structure.
What triggers a finding
The rule triggers when a served sitemap body is invalid XML, has an unsupported root element, or has another parse failure classified as malformed.
What the evidence shows
The selected sitemap response could not be parsed as the sitemap document shape expected by the scanner, and the finding records the parse reason.
Limits of this check
This rule does not report a missing sitemap, an unreachable declared sitemap, an empty sitemap, or a sitemap too large or truncated to judge. It validates the selected sitemap response, not every possible sitemap or crawler's later indexing decision.
How to fix it
Inspect the raw deployed response
Fetch the exact sitemap URL and confirm it returns XML sitemap content rather than an application shell, error document, or redirect response.
Correct the generated XML
Use urlset or sitemapindex as the root, escape reserved characters inside URLs, and ensure the generation pipeline emits complete XML.
How to verify the change
Parse and submit the deployed sitemap
Validate the exact production response with an XML parser and then inspect it in Search Console.
Expected: The response parses as a sitemap and contains the expected URL or sitemap entries.