Index page not found 404 in Google Webmaster Tools

[Northstar]

Does anyone know why google webmaster tools is showing my index as a URL not found error 404, when the page is clearly there? I checked the page over and over and there doesn't seem to be any problems with it. My index is listed first when I search the url in google. Does this happen occasionally with GWT?

[Receptional Andy]

There was a recent thread on this, which does seem to suggest it's just a bug within Webmaster Tools:

Webmaster Tools shows home page 404, but it is available [webmasterworld.com]

[lee_sufc]

Northstar - I had this problem and it seemed to correct itself within about 48 hours.

However, I also contacted my hosts who said their server was down for a few hours so this could have contributed to the error? Maybe it's worth trying to contact them?

[pxc433]

I'm also seeing this on my site, but there appears to have been no downtime and it's certainly OK now.

[lee_sufc]

I am seeing this problem AGAIN with my site today!

Anyone else?

[Key_Master]

Google is aware of the problem.

[lee_sufc]

Key_Master - how do you know this? Cheers.

[Key_Master]

I posted a detailed bug report of this and other issues in Google Groups. A Google employee promised to forward the info to the "right people".

My best guess is that this issue is connected in some way to crawling by Googlebot-Mobile. Currently, I have this bot blocked until this issue is resolved.

[bwnbwn]

I would unblock the bot it is fixed.

[Key_Master]

Do you have any info to back that claim up? It doesn't look fixed to me.

[bwnbwn]

First of all it has nothing to do with the serps and or effects on them it just a tool to help the webmaster see possible issues. That said I too had the index 404 but I think it was from another cause I won't get into. I fixed the issue it is gone now.

[gouri]

I think this problem is still there and this is the first posting to this thread in a week.

Does anyone else still see the problem with google giving a 404 message when visiting your homepage?

[dusky]

In reference to "Errors for URLs in Sitemaps" on WMT, I have 45 of them now showing as 404, although everyone of them is OK. For few weeks now it's adding more and more pages, my guess is the bot is saying to me "hey look, those pages are already in our index" seen all of them are on the SERPS and it's only recently I started using a sitemap. If that was the case, why not indicate so, or that would be telling. When I view the sitemap (with about 10,000 URLs) it seems OK on the browser, maybe it's timing out for some URLs, that is if one URL is larger than a certain bytes, it's throw a 404 and go to the next one, whereas the normal googlebot has more allowance (patience).

However, I am aware that a lot of WMT's features are new and in constant tuning, so let's hope things improve. There is one thing I am itching to see changed, under content analyses and Duplicate Titles / Descriptions, I wish it can be sorted by date DESC or ASC and URLs which are fixed by webmasters dropped after a week or so. Quite few bugs I know, one major one is under the later and if you have say 3 dup titles, what you see and what you hover over is different, I wish this will be fixed soon.

WMT is an awesome tool and I am sure once more features and bugs are sorted out, it'll become the best choice in building better sites in compliance with google TOS, seen what's done wrong by mistake, will show!

Well, that my two cents!