What causes "fetching %s: no go-import meta tag found in %s" in golang/go?

fetching %s: no go-import meta tag found in %s

Error message

fetching %s: no go-import meta tag found in %s

What it means

The fetched and parsed page contained zero go-import meta entries — not a parse error (that is 1149), the page tokenized fine but had no matching tags. The %s is the import prefix; the second %s is resp.URL.

Source

Thrown at src/cmd/go/internal/vcs/vcs.go:1168

		resp, err := web.Get(security, url)
		if err != nil {
			return setCache(fetchResult{url: url, err: fmt.Errorf("fetching %s: %v", importPrefix, err)})
		}
		body := resp.Body
		defer body.Close()
		imports, err := parseMetaGoImports(body, mod)
		if len(imports) == 0 {
			if respErr := resp.Err(); respErr != nil {
				// If the server's status was not OK, prefer to report that instead of
				// an XML parse error.
				return setCache(fetchResult{url: url, err: respErr})
			}
		}
		if err != nil {
			return setCache(fetchResult{url: url, err: fmt.Errorf("parsing %s: %v", resp.URL, err)})
		}
		if len(imports) == 0 {
			err = fmt.Errorf("fetching %s: no go-import meta tag found in %s", importPrefix, resp.URL)
		}
		return setCache(fetchResult{url: url, imports: imports, err: err})
	})
	res := resi.(fetchResult)
	return res.url, res.imports, res.err
}

type fetchResult struct {
	url     *urlpkg.URL
	imports []metaImport
	err     error
}

// metaImport represents the parsed <meta name="go-import"
// content="prefix vcs reporoot subdir" /> tags from HTML files.
type metaImport struct {
	Prefix, VCS, RepoRoot, SubDir string
}

View on GitHub (pinned to b6b368adc5)

Solutions

Add <meta name='go-import' content='<prefix> <vcs> <repo>'> to the host's HTML
Verify you're hitting the right host (inspect redirects)
Switch to a module proxy if you can't control the host's HTML

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Prevention

Add the go-import meta tag to every host that serves a Go vanity path
If you can't edit the host, publish the module via a Go proxy (GOPROXY) instead

When it happens

Trigger: The prefix host returns a valid HTML page with no <meta name='go-import'> tags at all, and resp.Err() was nil.

Common situations: Asking for a path whose host doesn't serve Go vanity headers; pointing at a plain website; forgot to add go-import meta tags; redirected to a marketing page.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of golang/go@b6b368adc5 (2026-08-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/e4d4d009cb248e80. Report an issue: GitHub.