Sitemaps reports robots.txt timeout

[andrewshim]

I've been getting this "URL timeout : robots.txt timeout" error periodically for a couple of weeks now. I wonder what is causing it.

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /rss/

User-agent: Googlebot-Mobile
Disallow: /rss/

My robots.txt file is all lower-case. Should I also make sure all the contents are typed in lower-case?

Is it caused by a server setting that can be changed?

Does it have anything to do with my web host?

Does the length of my sitemaps file have anything to do with it?

[tedster]

Some people have reported this error as being Google's own bug, and it clears up without them doing anything. Can you access the robots.txt file regularly on your own, with no timeout?

[andrewshim]

yep. No problems at all.

[tedster]

Well, a timeout error's got nothing to do with the content of the file - it means the file isn't even being sent in response to googlebot's request.