My sitemap became 404 in the last days

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My sitemap became 404 in the last days

jediviper

8:59 am on Nov 8, 2020 (gmt 0)

At a brand new website for which lately there was a 301 discussion [webmasterworld.com ] I have noticed that in the last days my sitemap is broken.
The GSC has found it for the last time on the 3/11 and the link is https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml
I am using the Rankmath SEO plugin and there everything looks ok as the sitemap is active.

I have found 2 suggestions from the Yoast support page that maybe could help also in my case, but they didn't work:
1) Go to WP Admin>Permalinks and just click save
2) Add this to the .htaccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^sitemap_index.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=1 [L]
RewriteRule ^([^/]+?)-sitemap([0-9]+)?.xml$ /index.php?sitemap=$1&amp;sitemap_n=$2 [L]

Any idea how to solve this?

[edited by: phranque at 11:17 am (utc) on Nov 8, 2020]
[edit reason] Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

phranque

11:20 am on Nov 8, 2020 (gmt 0)

The GSC has found it for the last time on the 3/11 and the link is https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml

what response do you get for that request?

jediviper

12:26 pm on Nov 8, 2020 (gmt 0)

Do you mean for the 3.11? It was marked as success.

Currently the sitemap is back and working. I don't know if any of the previous tricks worked. But is it normal that it wasn't accessed by Google for so many days after the 3/11?

Also, does it matter for the sitemap if all links start as www and there are no links with no-www?

phranque

1:38 pm on Nov 8, 2020 (gmt 0)

Do you mean for the 3.11?

i meant what response did you get when requesting your sitemap (https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml)

jediviper

8:26 am on Nov 9, 2020 (gmt 0)

I was getting a 404 page.

lucy24

4:05 pm on Nov 9, 2020 (gmt 0)

Psst!

([0-9]+)?

([0-9]*)

at a savings of one byte. Or, my personal preference,

(\d*)

at a further savings of three more bytes.