404 errors are quite normal parts for the web crawling, and it may be for 40% of the site’s URL in the Search Console, as per Google. John Mueller says it’s quite normal if 30-405 of URLs of a site’s search console reports are returned with Google’s 404 error page link.
This is stated during the Google Search Central SEO hangout from February 25, where we also learned it’s impossible to stop Google from trying to crawl URLs that no longer exist.
Google may continue trying to crawl URLs years after they’ve been deleted from a website, and there’s nothing site owners can do to prevent that from happening. Therefore 404s are unavoidable, even for the most diligent of SEOs.
Robb Young asked a series of questions that derive the information from Mueller. Young has a site that is returning 404’s in the Search Console for the URLs that he deleted 8 years ago. The URLs were 410’d, and no links are pointing towards them.
Mueller says 8 years is a pretty long time for the continuous crawling for the non-existent URL. But it is not impossible. If Google saw that the URL was living in the past, then it may crawl it from time to time. He suggests, if you know the URL is not existing, you can simply ignore it.
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“Seven or eight years sounds like a really long time… if it was something that we saw in the past then we’ll try to recrawl it every now and then. We’ll tell you: “oh this URL didn’t work.” And if you’re like: “well it’s not supposed to work.” Then that’s perfectly fine,” says Muller.
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Young asked if there is any other way to send Google a strong signal that it does not exist anymore? Mueller says there is no guarantee that they are not going to re-try it. Well, it will not cause any problems. To answer, Young Mueller says that it’s not just a few URLs that are returning. There are 30-40% of URLs in the report, which is having a 404 error. And it is perfectly fine and natural for a site.
Google can usually remember URLs long after you remove them and try to re-crawl those at any time. However, there is no need to stress when there is a 404 error in the Search Console for the URLs which do not exist anymore.
