Cache of website index page showing as 404 in Google

[Gemini23]

Anyone offer any advice?

Website seems to be loading fine and I cannot see anything untoward in the html...

but website is showing a 404 for cache... in Google (okay in Bing)
and also when cache:http://www.exampledomain.com to try to ascertain when website was last cached by Google...

comes up with 404 error... any suggestions?

[TheMadScientist]

I'd not worry about it too much -- The cached version of pages have historically been very slow to update at times and do not impact actual rankings. As long as the page is good now [run a header check to make sure you're not serving a 404 header even though you can see the content on the page] then there's nothing really to worry about or even do about it, except wait.

The reasons Gbot even got the error can range from "server glitch" to you happened to be uploading [when you upload a new version of a page the remote version is deleted and then the version you're uploading is saved, so there's a small window where the page isn't actually there and will return a 404 between the delete and the save] the page at the time it was spidered, and a number of other things in between.

[Gemini23]

and pleased to say that this has now resolved...

[TheMadScientist]

Good to hear -- Glad it got sorted out quickly and on it's own.

[Robert Charlton]

Just came across a July 28, 2015 thread in our New to Web Development forum discussing essentially the same situation, and adding one more possibility to the list of potential problems at Google's end...

Page sometimes gets a cached 404 error
https://www.webmasterworld.com/new_web_development/4759641.htm [webmasterworld.com]

lucy24 suggested...

Server maintenance at google's end?

Two questions on the same Google problem roughly a week apart doesn't exactly constitute a trend, but in any case you're not alone.