Googlebot asking for unknown pages

cause drop in rankings?

[textex]

"GET /+unknownpagethatdon'texist HTTP/1.0" 404 359 "-" "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)"

Google is looking for a page that does not exist and never did. Would this cause my big drop in rankings?

[DerekH]

This suggests that either you have a robots.txt file with a peculiar entry, or someone has linked to you with a bad link.

Though the link: command may not highlight any of the latter instances, you can also look for your "missing" page in google, by typing its address and picking each of the options it offers you...

But no, I don't think it will affect your ranking - boosts come when it finds something it likes, not when it can't find something it may or may not like...

DerekH

[textex]

I didn't think it would cause a drop.

I can not figure out why site dropped from top 3 in SERPS to 60-70's.

Does Google impose any sort of penalties?

[kaled]

If you have bad links within your site it is conceivable that Google could apply a (small) penalty. However, bad links into your site from another site should have zero negative impact. Google state that other sites cannot negatively affect yours.

Of course, this assumes a bug-free Google is operating.

Kaled.

[textex]

I've recently checked all of my links and they all are fine. All of have pagerank and none are spammy.

Any other things to trip a penalty?

I tried allinanchor search and my site was buried...

Do you think it is a google bug?

[kaled]

I occasionally get errors regarding non-existent pages with huge names and even spaces in them. I don't think it is anything to worry about.

It has been suggested in other threads that this sort of thing can happen if someone enters garbage while using the Google toolbar.

There are many explanations why a site might drop significantly.

1: It didn't deserve the high ranking and was there temporarily as a freak search result.
2: Lost backlinks (possibly temporary as a result of a server failure).
3: Backlinks being demoted. If you have backlinks from dodgy sites the Google techs may have caught up.
4: A minor algo tweak can have large effects in competitive areas. This is especially true if your site has a relatively low PR and achieved it position by factors such as H1 keywords, anchor text, etc.
5: New sites may be pushed up by Google temporarily. In the days of the dance, Everflux could cause new sites to oscillate for up to three months.

And those are just a few reasons from a really long list. Remember, checking backlinks with Google highly unreliable.

Probably the best way to check backlinks with Google is to search for www.domainname.com -site:domainname.com. This is imperfect but is vastly better than the official method.

Kaled.

[textex]

The site in question did rank well for quite some time. The number of links exchanged was relatively the same as the amount of links I exchanged with my sites for.

I tried the www.domainname.com -site:domainname.com. The number of links returned is significanlty lower than my other sites. I am hoping it is a temporay glitch....

All thoughts on this subject are appreciated.

[BlueSky]

I checked my error log today. Google did very similar on my site a couple days ago where he requested either non-existent pages or truncated the file name. Jim gives a good explanation on why an SE may ask for non-existent pages occasionally besides following a bad link to your site or removed pages: [webmasterworld.com...]