I Submitted a Sitemap with 404s to Google. Now What? (A 3-Step Fix)

It’s a moment of pure panic for any creator or developer. You've carefully crafted your website, and you submit your sitemap to Google, ready for the traffic to roll in. But then you realize: the sitemap was broken. It was full of dead links, all leading to 404 Not Found errors.

Your first thought is likely, "Have I just destroyed my SEO?"

Take a deep breath. The answer is no, but you do need to act. Submitting a sitemap with 404 errors is a common technical SEO mistake. While it won't get you permanently penalized, it signals to Google that your site might be poorly maintained and, more importantly, it wastes your precious crawl budget.

Here’s how to diagnose the damage and execute a clean, three-step recovery plan.

Step 1: Diagnosis - Understanding the Impact

First, let's be clear about what’s happening. When Google's crawlers follow your broken sitemap, they spend their limited time and resources visiting non-existent pages. This is the crawl budget waste problem. Instead of indexing your brilliant new blog post, Googlebot is busy knocking on the doors of empty houses.

This tells Google two things:

1. Your official "map" (the sitemap) is unreliable.
2. Your site has a potential quality control issue.

Over time, this can slow down the indexing of your new, legitimate content. Your goal now is to give Google a new, accurate map and clean up the old mess.

How to confirm the scope of the problem:

• Log into your Google Search Console (GSC).
• Go to Indexing > Pages.
• Look at the "Why pages aren't indexed" report and click on "Not found (404)". This will show you the list of dead links Google has already found.

Step 2: The Fix - A Clean Swap and Server-Side Signal

This is the most critical phase. You need to perform a clean swap and ensure your server is communicating correctly.

1. Remove the Broken Sitemap: In Google Search Console, go to the Sitemaps section. Find the faulty sitemap, click the three-dot menu, and select "Remove sitemap." This is the equivalent of telling Google, "Ignore the bad directions I gave you."

2. Create and Submit a Correct Sitemap: Generate a new, clean sitemap that only contains valid, live URLs (200 OK status). If you don't have a tool for this, now is the time to set one up. Manually creating sitemaps is a recipe for errors.

   • Upload the new sitemap.xml to your site's root directory.
   • Submit the new sitemap URL in GSC.

3. Ensure URLs Correctly Return a 404 Status: This is non-negotiable. When a bot or user visits one of the old, broken URLs, your server must respond with a 404 Not Found HTTP status code. Do not redirect them to the homepage—this is known as a "soft 404" and is confusing for search engines. A clear 404 tells Google, "This page is gone, and that's intentional. You can stop looking for it."

Step 3: Patience - Letting the System Heal

Once you've done the clean swap, the recovery process begins. It is not instantaneous.

• Google will eventually re-crawl your site using the new, correct sitemap.
• It will also periodically revisit the old, broken URLs it found earlier.
• When it sees the consistent 404 responses on those old URLs, it will gradually de-index them and remove them from its reports.

This healing process can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months, depending on your site's authority and crawl frequency. You will see the number of 404 errors in your GSC report slowly decrease. This is a sign of success. Do not panic if they don't disappear overnight.

The Lesson: Your Website is a Living Document

This incident highlights a core principle of technical SEO: your website is not a static project; it's a living, breathing entity that requires maintenance. A sitemap isn't just a file you submit once; it's the official, up-to-date guide to your digital property.

Building a robust content platform is about more than just writing. It’s about ensuring the underlying structure is sound, fast, and error-free. Your content deserves a home that doesn’t send visitors—or Googlebots—down dead-end streets.

At Postion, we handle the technical headaches like automatic sitemap generation and clean URL structures for you. Our platform is built so you can focus on creating valuable content, confident that the technical foundation is solid and optimized.

Ready to build on a platform that respects your hard work? Explore how Postion provides a robust, SEO-ready foundation for your content..