Sitemap updates from Shopify causes fetching errors

Shopify didn't announce the performance changes but you may notice fetching errors in Google Seach Console.

NO ACTION REQUIRED: Shopify has already sent the updated sitemap to Google. We're just waiting for Google to see the updates. You do not need to resubmit your sitemap to Google.

Shopify handles your sitemaps so I'm shocked that there isn't an update in their changlogs or their sitemap documentation.

Kyle Risley, a Shopify SEO team member, says there were updates on how the XML sitemaps are generated. Though these changes are performance improvements, there are temporary fetching errors.

We've always had one single XML sitemap page. You can see your XML sitemap by going to your homepage and adding /sitemap.xml to the URL. Once there, you'll see sub-sitemaps for products, pages, collections, and blogs. No changes here.

As an example, this is the primary XML sitemap we send to Google. Notice we still see the success status.

The sub-sitmaps inside of that look like the following. Notice we now see sitemap errors in Google Search Console.

In this screenshot, we can see the errors from both collections and pages. That's because /sitemap_collections_1.xml and /sitemap_pages_1.xml are no longer valid URLs. They instead return a 400 error which means Google could not read those sitemap URLs.

The big change, which we don't see in this screenshot yet, is that those sub-sitemaps now use "from" and "to" parameters. Eventually, we should see something like /sitemap_collections_1.xml?from=123456789&to=987654321 and /sitemap_pages_1.xml?from=123456789&to=987654321. The numbers represent the internal Shopify ID of the product, collection, or page.

Products already used the parameters which is why we don't see errors for that sub-sitemap. Collections and pages did not use the parameters, hence the error in Search Console. Blogs do not have the new parameter and there are no plans to add the parameters anytime soon.

As mentioned, there is nothing you need to do.

Google can still read your primary XML file so they'll automatically see the changes from Shopify and update accordingly. We're just waiting for Google to see the updates.

If it makes you feel better, you can remove the individual sitemaps with errors, but it's not required.

Though JSON-LD for SEO has no impact on your sitemaps, I wanted to share this update with you. If you have questions on this sitemap change, I recommend reaching out to Shopify Support.