Network Unreachable, Robots.txt Unreachable error in Google Sitemaps

trying to understand what it's about

[andrewshim]

Been getting this error for weeks now with no clear solution in sight. My robots.txt is a simple one with NO disallows. My sitemap.xml file just contains 2 URLs (so that I can discount any problems with the coding) but I just cannot get rid of the error being reported in Google sitemaps. So I figured it might help if I understand everyone's interpretation of the error.

Does the word "network" refer to my website or the physical server network? In other words, am I doing something that's blocking googlebot or is my server blocking it?

[tedster]

I've been hearing a number of similar reports. If you can reach your robots.txt and sitemap.xml pages and get a straight 200 response, I assume this means Google is running into an internal problem with their system. But the message is certainly cryptic for that situation, isn't it?

I know of two cases where this message just cleared up on its own.

[andrewshim]

Is the troubleshooting as simple as that Tedster?

Just check that they return a 200 status and if they do then I need to assume it is a Google bug?
I mean its been more than 3 weeks! In the meantime, my site's gone out of the serps.

Could you suggest any other diagnostic measures?

Please?

[TheSeoDude]

Check your raw logs and find robots.txt taken by google. See if it's a 200. If it's not 200 begin to worry as you might have problems with other pages and that might be the reason for dropping out of serps.

Out of SERPs? I'm not really sure unreachable robots.txt can do that but unreachable pages CAN.

Check your .htaccess not to block google and check the headers returned when you try to download robots.txt with external tools found free online.

{edit} I wrote eternal instead of external. Really tired and really late!

[edited by: TheSeoDude at 11:38 pm (utc) on Aug. 28, 2007]

[icedowl]

A few months ago I made a typo in my .htacess file and got this same error. Fortunately I did catch it rather quickly.

Just something to check...

[andrewshim]

My .htaccess is as follows :

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.php\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

A few more questions to help me understand things better...

I wonder... is there a way to specifically state in my .htaccess that I allow googlebot to access my site?

I've been getting Unreachable URLs for about 3 weeks (maybe longer) now in my sitemaps report. Details for all of them state "robots.txt unreachable". Am I in deep trouble?

I have not updated my site for about a month because I wanted to solve this problem first. Then it became a fear that adding more content would screw things up more.

Could Google have interpreted my lapse in adding new content as my site being dead?

I admit that I don't really have "quality" links going into my site (I'm finding it hard to cope with my home biz and managing my sites). Could Google have flagged my site as "not important" and cause this error?