robots.txt unreachable

Error issued by Sitemaps

[apprentice]

All over sudden I got this error in the Diagnostic section of my Google Sitemaps account. It's marked in red, and the error is "5xx error robots.txt unreachable". There is no other error.

Now, there would be nothing unusual about this, except the site is fully up and I can access the robot URI individually as well as any other page on the site. To top it up, whenever I use the robot analyser tool (also in Sitemaps) it returns a 200 (Success). I re-submitted the Sitemap file three times already. Although the site usually loads within 3 seconds, could it be the case that the bot from Sitemaps is too impatient and timeouts too soon?

Regards

[redcrew]

I'm having the same issue. I've re-submitted the sitemap several times. It's really bugging me!

[apprentice]

It has fixed itself now - after 3 days. I will probably never know what caused it, but at least the sitemap is healthy again.

Regards

[harlock]

I'm having the same issue, right now.

...maybe some updates at google sitemap engine....
or a MIME type specification error, but nothing changed from last good scan.
Could this be related to the .htaccess/Apache mod_rewrite used on the server?

[apprentice]

That might not be a problem on our side then. If I remember correctly I have seen similar cases been reported elsewhere. Give it couple of days and it will fix itself. I didn't do anything about it.