| "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | barryhunter | 2/16/14 4:31 PM | Just got a really strange message
Thing is we don't have a FTP server, never have. ftp protocol would never of worked (as far as I know) The site is NOT listed in my webmaster tools account. http://geograph.org.uk however IS listed. When click the link to WMT in the email it redirects to which is just the normal homepage (with the various http websites listed) . persumably as dont have that site listed. Don't know how would of ever being able to verify the ftp site either. I get plenty of these messages for old obsolete websites, which is one thing, but to get one for a site that has never existed is a new one. Be sure to include this message ID: [WMT-94051] |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | AngusCollege_webteam | 2/17/14 1:06 AM | I have had the same problem, received a report on Saturday (15 Feb) about an FTP site on our domain that we don't have. Seeing it must not be unique to one account I think the most likely explanation is a Webmaster Tools update that's gone wrong? |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | Steven Lockey | 2/17/14 3:31 AM | Or someone has put a link on their website to that URL. If it doesn't exist and it returns 404, thats all good. You've told Google the page doesn't exist so this can be ignored. Its just a warning in case a page that someone has linked to is meant to exist and for whatever reason doesn't. |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | barryhunter | 2/17/14 8:44 AM |
I suppose its possible, but why would anyone create a ftp://geograph.org.uk/ ... link? (rhetorical!)
It doesnt exist. But it doesnt return a 404. 404 is a HTTP status code, not FTP :) There is simply no server running on the port 21 - the FTP port.
Slightly tangental, but I wish the message made the fact that it could be a false error clearer. The [WMT-94051] message is worded like there is something that needs fixing. I know nothing needs doing in this case (because there is nothing that can be done!), but have had a couple of clients contact me about these messages very concerned. |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | barryhunter | 2/17/14 8:46 AM | of course, we are now creating a ftp://geograph.org.uk/ link for Google to find - in this thread :) a sort of self fulfilling prophecy ;p |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | Steven Lockey | 2/17/14 8:51 AM | Its been scanned by the bot which looks for a HTTP/HTTPS response so thats all good ;)
How does Google know the difference? It might be there was meant to be a page there and you had misconfiguration on the server. Google have no way of know, so they display the error just in case. You can't really have a full page description for each error but a link to read more about each error type would be nice indeed! |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | barryhunter | 2/17/14 9:14 AM |
Actully, it seems it does use the FTP protocol :)
Thats my point, it doesnt. It's worded like it thinks there is an error. A simple, "Or if its intentional there is no content available, here you can ignore this message" would be all thats needed. they tell you what to do once you've fixed the 'error'. But not what to do if you have no intention of fixing the phantom error. My only recourse at this point is to make a rule in Gmail to delete the messages. |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | Steven Lockey | 2/18/14 1:34 AM | Well technically you can make it return 410 instead which will get rid of the error (410 is Permanently removed/Page will never exist) which should cause the error message to go away. Speaking very technically and been very very picky, that is what it should return anyway to a HTTP request but no-one's servers do ;) |
| Re: "Googlebot can't access your site" for a FTP site that has never existed. | barryhunter | 2/18/14 4:21 PM |
There is no 410 in the FTP protocol.
But we also dont know what URL Google was trying to access, just something in ftp://geograph.org.uk/ because it was trying to access ftp://geograph.org.uk/robots.txtHaving no robots.txt is the same as saying go anywhere, so returning 410 (if it was possibel) for robots.txt wouldn't help anything
But its not making HTTP requests. FTP is a different protocol. But we do use 410 status for pages that are gone from our HTTP server :) |