What, why, and how to solve crawl request not found '404 error'?

Frustrated by 404 'crawl request not found' errors? Learn why Google crawls non-existent pages, how to detect them (including soft 404s), and fix issues to optimize SEO.

What is the "HTT'P 404 error" crawl request not found?

How to detect and solve a ' '404 error'?

Google’s John Mueller made three interesting statements about why Google crawls non-existent pages:

Soft-404s Impacts (URL is not on Google):

The crawl requests not found "HTT'P 404 error or 404 error" is an URL or a set of URLs that either was published or created but after publishing the URL has been removed (404 error: dead, removed, or broken link) or changes in the URL structure or miss configured while created which means crawl bots once founds a specific URL but failed to retrieve data for the requested URL (page fetch) that happens (crawl bots inspect a URL or URLs) then the search bots cited the URL Crawl stats as Crawl request Not found and that is called HTT'P 404 error or 404 error or 404s or 404 or the soft-404s in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Follow these well-arranged Technical SEOs commended 404 error fixing steps to solve the HTTP 404 error URLs (Crawl requests: Not found (404):

• Visit the search console or CRM panel to find the error 404
• Notice the Search Console Notifications.
• In Google Analytics, go to the behavior section and click on site content.
• Inspect URLs on GSC's URL Inspection (Page fetch errorFailed: Not found (404)
• Audit Technical SEO.
• Sort out 404 URLs.
• Sort out the destination URLs.
• Change the URL structure (if the content is not distributed enough).
• Redirect a 404 URL to a 200 HTML status's ok URL.
• Never remove a 404-error status URL; rather better decision is either changing the URL structure or an error 404 redirecting to a live URL.
• If there are no live URLs, create new content that matches with error 404 URL's content, create a permanent permalink then redirect.
• If technical SEO, especially fixing 404 URL issues, is painful, simply redirect permanently removed or non-existent URLs to the home page.
• Get bits of help from the relevant CRM plugin to manage and maintain the 404s URLs.
• Also, get help from SEO or Digital Marketing tools to find the 404 files and content URLs, manage, i.e., Creating Redirects for 404 URLs, configuring 404 Settings, enabling 404 Tracking.
• In Google Search Console (GSC) or Bing Search Console (BSC), following best practice is to use the Nofollow tag for those 404 error pages through the custom robots.txt. N.B. Having too many Nofollow links is bad in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or using the Nofollow option on an SEO Plugin.
• Disallow through custom robots.txt.
• Follow clever techniques to handle 404 error pages (I would prefer the URL Redirection technique to consider the UX and the Search Crawling and Indexing Bots). 

1. 404 crawls are sometimes Google utilizing extra crawl capacity to double-check URLs that used to exist (in case of the page returns).
2. 404 crawling is a sign that Google has more than enough capacity to crawl more URLs from your site.
3. 404 pages do not need to be blocked from crawling (to preserve the crawl budget). You will not lose crawl capacity from 404 crawls. - Cited from Google’s John Mueller Explains Why Google Crawls Non-Existent Pages (if this hyperlink is configured, then it can be a 404 error URL).

Why does a URL state "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist" (404, Non-Existing Page or Pages)?

Momenul Ahmad

Momenul Ahmad: Helping businesses, brands, and professionals with ethical SEO and digital Marketing. Digital Marketing Writer, Digital Marketing Blog (Founding) Owner at SEOSiri, Editor at LinkedIn Newsletter in Digital Marketing, and Business and Brand Marketing, SEO Copywriter (Remote) at Octoparse - Octopus Data Inc, SE Ranking AI Writer Reviewer, Web Writer at Washington MORNING.

Update history: last edited on 10/05/2023, 27/05/2025