The Silent Sitemap Bug That Blocked Google From Indexing My Sites

Short summary

A developer discovered that their sitemap generation created [object Object] placeholders instead of actual URLs—Google silently skipped the entire file despite Search Console displaying 'Success.' The root cause was a JavaScript bug where page.url was an object instead of a string. The key lesson: always validate raw XML before trusting Search Console status, as a single malformed URL can silently block your entire site from indexing.

• •Sitemap bug: passing a JavaScript object instead of a string creates [object Object] URLs that Google silently rejects
• •False positive: Google Search Console showed 'Success' with zero discovered pages—the status alone is unreliable
• •Debug tip: always inspect the raw XML file in your browser to catch serialization bugs before submission

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