Googlebot asks for pages deleted over two years ago

[johnlim9988]

Hi,

Now according to google webmaster tools, our site have 1425 Page Not found errors.

Then we studid the URL which has not found error, and we check from [archive.org...] that some pages only existed about two years ago................

Then we cannot understand over two years why googlebot still try to reach those pages? And at our site should no those links already........

[Dugger]

Googlebot has been asking for pages of mine that only existed briefly over 5 years ago (and longer). This has been going on for years and is not a recent change in Googlebot's behaviour. They say an elephant never forgets - neither does Google.

[johnlim9988]

Do you have any internal or external link to that page? As ours, we checked and cannot find any link to the page, neither internal or external.....

Thanks.

[Asia_Expat]

I also have this problem but it's a very troublesome one for me. I have to use a set of htaccess commands to produce 404 headers for a certain type of dynamic url string that existed on my site over 2 years ago but Google is STILL requesting them. It's a problem for me because the htaccess commands to produce these specific 404's under these very specific conditions are preventing me from doing some other htaccess stuff that I need to do.

What's the point of 404's if this happens... does a 404 response mean 'please come back and try to find these URL's until the end of time'?... no, it doesn't.

[Asia_Expat]

Does anyone know if Google continues to make requests for old 410 headers also?

[arubicus]

From what I have seen first hand that there wasn't, rather still isn't, a crawl difference between the 410 and the 404.

[Dugger]

No, there are no links to the old pages that Googlebot requests.

[johnlim9988]

Hi, since there are no links to the old pages then why Googlebot still requests those pages even after so many years? Really confused......

[Dugger]

It seems that once a page is in their database it is there forever until removed is requested. No links are required.

[webastronaut]

Orphin pages could be somewhere?...Maybe not in the current site structure on your computer but have you looked at all files online? Xenu...

[webastronaut]

"orphan"

[tedster]

I agree with Dugger. Orphaned or not, backlinks or not, once Google gets a url to resolve even once, then they will keep checking on it for years and years - although with declining frequency. There is nothing to worry about here. And sometimes, you can get some happy results by recycling the flotsam and jetsam you find this way.

[Dugger]

Not orphan - I have pages I uploaded for only a couple of days back before Y2K and then took them down. Google still looks for them. So, the good news is that you don't have to worry that Google will forget about you if your server is down for any length of time :-)

[jimbeetle]

As tedster said, Google is nothing if not persistent, very persistent. This is also a good time to highlight that once you put in a 301 redirect you keep it there permanently as Google will, sooner or later re-request the url.

[johnlim9988]

I have a concern, will it affect our google ranking?

As now we have 1425 pages not found errors by googlebot, we really have such kind of pages before, but we took out some pages over three years, and took out some other pages over two years and no internal or external to these pages already.

Now I strongly suspect so many (1425) page not found errors will affect our google ranking............

As we have unique contents and also have many backlinks to many important pages in our site but our ranking still not good......

[johnlim9988]

I have a concern, will it affect our google ranking?

As now we have 1425 pages not found errors by googlebot, we really have such kind of pages before, but we took out some pages over three years, and took out some other pages over two years and no internal or external to these pages already.

Now I strongly suspect so many (1425) page not found errors will affect our google ranking............

As we have unique contents and also have many backlinks to many important pages in our site but our ranking still not good......

[g1smd]

It will not affect anything.

Google checks occasionally to see that the page is still gone.

That is not a problem.