New Google Webmaster Tools showing pending (Clock Symbol) status for Sitemaps

Do you see a clock symbol below the “status” heading in the sitemap section in Google Webmaster Tools?

I am also currently seeing zero pages for my sitemaps. The number of indexed pages and the number of submitted pages are changing all the time.

Sometimes: One or more sitemaps are shown to be downloaded: Occasionally, URL submitted and URL indexed option show a number of pages and a green tick sign is shown below the status heading.

I have been seeing this issue from the day, Google Webmaster Tools, got this new look. Google have recently changed the appearance and other things GWMTs. And I have been experiencing this problem with the sitemaps from the day the old GWMTs was converted to the new one.

After searching the Google Webmaster Forum for some time: I finally got the answer to my problem.

Google has officially talked about this problem:

According to Google, there is no specific problem with our sites.

Google is working on solving this problem and it’s a problem faced by many people who are using GWMTs.

JohnMu [Google Employee] wrote about this issue in this thread. He mentioned that there is some issue with webmaster tools about the pending status being shown for submitted sitemaps.

He further explained that: webmasters do not need to resubmit the sitemaps. In fact, webmasters do not have to do anything at all.

Webmasters also don’t need to worry about their site’s performance in SERPs as this issue has nothing to do with a site’s ranking in search results.

JohnMu also mentioned an official Google Webmaster Help Forum Announcement blog post in his explanation. This announcement pretty much said the same thing as JohnMu explained.

Thank You JohnMu for yet another explanation about an issue that many people were facing. JohnMu always clarify things for us and he always help out webmasters.

If you are seeing this problem in your Google Webmaster Tools account, then you should simply ignore it. Sooner or later, Google will solve this issue.