Crawl Errors: When Googlebot Cannot Access Your Pages
Crawl errors are URLs Googlebot could not crawl successfully, whether because of server errors, not-found responses, or access problems.
Crawl Errors is URLs Googlebot could not crawl successfully.
What They Are
Crawl errors are URLs where Googlebot could not complete a successful crawl.
They appear in the Index Coverage report in Google Search Console.
Common Causes
- Server errors like HTTP 5xx from downtime or broken hosting.
- 404 not-found responses on pages that should still exist.
- Access blocked by robots.txt or login walls.
- DNS and connection failures.
Why They Matter
- If Google cannot crawl a page, it cannot index or re-index it.
- Persistent errors can waste crawl budget and delay updates.
- Broken pages that should exist hurt trust and user experience.
How to Fix
- Watch the Index Coverage report for new errors.
- Fix server errors at the source, not by resubmitting URLs.
- Redirect or remove pages that are no longer valid.
- Make sure robots.txt does not block pages you want crawled.
Before: a site change returns 500 errors on dozens of pages for weeks.
After: the team fixes the errors and re-crawls the URLs.
The result: the pages are indexed again and traffic recovers.
The lesson: errors you cannot see are errors you cannot fix.
Quick Tip
Use URL Inspection to request re-crawling once real errors are fixed, but only after the fix is live.
Frequently Asked Questions
Crawl Errors, in Short
Googlebot reports every page it cannot reach.
Fix the source of the error, then let Google re-crawl.