On a site with hundreds of listings, the property sitemap can return a 500 error or time out instead of loading.
Why this happens. Property listings carry a lot of structured data (bedrooms, photo lists, amenities). An SEO plugin that builds one sitemap page containing every listing, with images included, can run out of PHP memory at that size.
How to fix it. Split the sitemap into smaller pages:
- In WordPress, go to Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > General.
- Change Links per sitemap from 1000 to 200 and save.
- Clear the site cache (your host’s cache, and WP Rocket if it is installed).
- Open /sitemap_index.xml. The property sitemap now appears as several pages (property-sitemap1.xml, property-sitemap2.xml, and so on), each loading in under a second once cached.
- Resubmit /sitemap_index.xml in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
The old /property-sitemap.xml address redirects to the first page, so existing submissions keep working.