If you have recently launched a new blog on Google’s Blogger platform, connected it to Google Search Console (GSC), and submitted your sitemap, you were likely met with a frustrating wall of red error messages. You might see /sitemap.xml flagged with a red "1 error" stating "Sitemap can be read, but has errors: Missing XML tag (parent tag: urlset, tag: url)". Even worse, your secondary feeds might persistently show a red "Couldn't fetch" status.
To make matters more frustrating, when you try to delete these broken sitemaps to start fresh, you click the three vertical dots on your sitemaps table only to find that the "Remove sitemap" option is completely missing. You are trapped in a technical loop with no obvious way out.
This comprehensive guide breaks down the underlying cause of this common glitch, exposes the hidden Google Search Console interface trap, and reveals the exact 4-step playbook to secure a verified, bright-green "Success" sitemap status.
The Core Culprit: The "Empty Sitemap" Paradox
The first thing to understand is that your website is not broken, and your sitemap file is not corrupted. The "Missing XML tag" error is caused by a simple chronological mismatch between when you connected Search Console and when you published your first post.
Blogger automatically generates a sitemap file (/sitemap.xml) at your root domain. However, a valid XML sitemap strictly requires nested <url> and <loc> tags to declare active page links to search engines. When you connect a brand-new blog to GSC before publishing any articles, your sitemap file is essentially empty of these tags. When Googlebot attempts to crawl the empty file, it fails to find the required XML nodes, resulting in the "Missing XML tag" parser error.
What About "Couldn't Fetch"?
In Google Search Console, "Couldn't fetch" is a notoriously misleading error message. On new domains or recently updated sitemaps, "Couldn't fetch" simply means **"Pending"**. It indicates that Google's crawling systems have placed your sitemap in their queue but have not physically visited or processed the URL yet. Repeatedly deleting and resubmitting the file only pushes your site back to the end of Google's crawling queue.
The GSC Interface Trap: Where is the Delete Option?
When you attempt to clear these broken sitemaps to reset Google's crawlers, you encounter a major user interface hurdle in Google Search Console. If you tap the three vertical dots directly on the row of your submitted sitemaps table, GSC only displays options to "See page indexing" or "See video page indexing". The delete button is completely hidden.
To bypass this interface trap and successfully remove an invalid sitemap, you must use the following pathway:
- In your GSC Sitemaps dashboard, click directly on the blue text link of the sitemap name (e.g., click on
/sitemap.xml) under the "Sitemap" column. This opens a detailed report page dedicated purely to that sitemap. - Look at the very top-right corner of your screen, directly next to the "OPEN SITEMAP" button (located right underneath your circular Google profile picture).
- Tap the three vertical dots (⋮) in that top-right corner.
- Select "Remove sitemap" from the dropdown menu and confirm the deletion.
The 4-Step Playbook to Secure Green Sitemap "Success"
Now that you know how the system operates, follow this exact sequence to establish a clean, green-lit indexing pipeline:
Step 1: Publish Substantive Content First
Never submit a sitemap to Google Search Console until you have published at least one to three high-quality, on-page optimized posts. This ensures that when Google's crawlers fetch the XML file, it is fully populated with active links, preventing the "Missing XML tag" parsing error from triggering in the first place.
Step 2: Clear Out the Sitemap Cache
If you have already submitted sitemaps and received errors, open GSC and use the step-by-step deletion pathway detailed above to remove **every single sitemap** from your list until your "Submitted sitemaps" table is completely empty. This clears GSC's aggressive internal cache for your domain name and resets Google's failure loop for those specific files.
Step 3: Clear Browser Cache and Wait
After removing the sitemaps, log out of Search Console, clear your browser's cookies and cache, and wait 12 to 24 hours. This gives Blogger's servers and Google Search Console's indexing databases adequate time to reconcile and update their cached files.
Step 4: Resubmit the Clean Sitemap
Log back into Google Search Console, navigate to the Sitemaps tab, and enter the following native Blogger sitemap in the "Add a new sitemap" field:
sitemap.xml
Click **Submit**. Because your sitemap file is now fully populated with your published articles, Googlebot will read the valid XML structure and return a perfect, bright-green "Success" status showing your exact count of discovered pages.
Conclusion: Focus on What Generates Traffic
While having a successful sitemap is helpful for crawl efficiency, it is crucial to remember that a sitemap does not guarantee indexing or higher search engine rankings. Google is an incredibly advanced spider; once it discovers your homepage, it will naturally follow your custom category menus and internal links to index your entire website without needing a sitemap to find them.
Do not waste weeks fighting minor webmaster glitches. Establish your technical baseline, configure your custom robots headers, and focus your energy on creating high-value, unique content that solves real problems for your readers.