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

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

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

How to detect and solve a crawl request not found '404 error'?

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

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

The common reasons are to be a URL as the 404 Error (soft-404s) URL:

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).

Crawl request not found '404 error'


How to detect and solve a crawl request not found '404 error'?

To detect and solve high-value SEO tiny tasks in an easy way while technical SEO is the biggest myth to you, whatever! Don't worry.

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 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 404 URL issues fixing is painful, simply redirect permanently removed or not existing 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 using the Nofollow tag for those 404 error pages through the custom robots.txt, N.B. having too many Nofollow links are bad in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or using Nofollow option on 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). 

Google’s John Mueller made three interesting statements about why Google crawls non-existent pages:
  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 (for the purpose of preserving 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 miss configures 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)?

The common reasons are to be a URL as the 404 Error (soft-404s) URL:
  • Wrong URL Structure.
  • URL address changing.
  • Removing URL.
  • Miss configuring while hyperlinking.
  • It may occur while migrating to a site.
  • Massive disputative URL deindexing and URL Removal
  • Badly configured template with error in coding, and more.
  • Knowledge gap or unconsciousness about the website or blog management.

Soft-404s Impacts (URL is not on Google):
  • Page indexing Page is not indexed: the URL is unknown to Google.
  • Bad UX.
  • Losing DA and PA rank.
  • Losing trust score.
  • Spiling the brand impressions.
  • Rank dropping on the SERPs.
  • Content disappearance on the search engine.

After inspecting a 404 error URL on Google Search Console (GSC), you will see the report as:

Discovery
Sitemaps
No referring sitemaps detected
Referring page
None detected
URL might be known from other sources that are currently not reported
Crawl
Last crawl
N/A
Crawled as
N/A
Crawl allowed?
N/A
Page fetch
N/A
Indexing allowed?
    N/A
Indexing
User-declared canonical
N/A
Google-selected canonical
N/A

I hope that you got to cover it after seeing the above 404 GSC error inspected report, a crawl requests not found URL's live test image, impacts, and the reasons for 404, Non-Existing Pages or Page, findings, and solution steps to fixing the 404 HTTP or the 404 URL errors.

Also, I would recommend following for indexing content for a few but most effective approaches.

FYI, I would be happy to listen to your extended knowledge about 400 errors because I hereby shared my own SEO Expertise so if you found any misconception about the covered paragraph then please let me know to fix that or add something to flourish more. 

Service Invitation:

I and the team SEOSiri are ready to support you in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So, get ready to buy our SEO Expertise ðŸ‘‰(message me) to rule the SERPs and also to win over the competitor's Search Rank.

Thank you

Momenul Ahmad

Top Quora Search Engine Marketing (SEM) writer

Momenul Ahmad: Helping businesses, brands, and professionals with ethical SEO, 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 at 10/05/2023