Google crawl errors: 404 not found

[rivergirl]

In my Google webmaster tools under Crawl I have 3 errors of 404 not found pages. One page was removed and I'm not sure where Google is still picking it up at, however the other 2 are: http://www.example.com/public_html/example/

I never had any pages listed under public_html so I am baffled...but also a beginner and am hoping there is an easy explaination and fix for this. I've recently lost Google ranking and am hoping it's not because of these errors.

Thanks all!

[tedster]

First, if an incorrect url is returning a 404, then you have no worries about where Google is getting those urls. Even removed pages get spidered over and over again, checkng to see if they've reappeared. Google will remember removed urls for a long time - and their content may even be held in the Supplemental Index for an extended period. That's the way Google does things and you should have no worries over it.

public_html is a common "real" server folder for a website on a shared hosting platform. Who knows how or where the Google crawl picked up that address. But as long as the server does not actually return a 200 OK for those urls and instead does say "404", then everything I wrote above still holds. Google may just be doing some preventative checking to see if the server is misconfigured. It's also possible that those urls have been exposed somewhere or other - even in a publicly available logfile.

If you are curious, try searching for inurl:example.com/public_html and see what you find.

[WiseWebDude]

Yea, Tedster is right...I know for a fact Yahoo DOES send bad URLs to your server to "check" if it returns a 404 or not. I'm sure Google does the same because if you are verifying your site in Google Sitemaps and your site is set to 301 every missing page it will warn you your server is not giving a 404...so that indicates that they DO send bad URLs to check.

[rivergirl]

Thanks to you both. That explains it well. Google removed those public_html "error, 404 not found" just today.

Thanks again! Love this forum