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I've noticed 2 URL's not found (/mobile) and (/m) which are apparently linked from my homepage. Neither of these URLs do or have ever existed on the site so there is not and has never been any such links to these pages.

So I can only assume that the bot has decided (on its own) to look for these URL's and report an error when it cannot find them? Why?

If it's trying to look for a mobile version of the site, there isn't one. The site is responsive and even google's own "mobile-friendly" site checker confirms the site is mobile friendly, so what gives? Do I mark as fixed or continue to let google report these unfound URL's?

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  • How long have you had the domain; once it previously registered by someone else?
    – MrWhite
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 9:54
  • Newly registered domain. Not aware it was ever owned by anyone else.
    – Cairns80
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 10:24
  • Sharing the site address in question goes a long way.
    – Simon Hayter
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 10:48

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Newly registered domain. Not aware it was ever owned by anyone else.

My best guess would be that this domain hosted another website in a previous life that contained these links, particularly since Webmaster Tools is reporting these links as internal from your home page.

Do I mark as fixed

No. That tells Google that you've implemented (ie. "fixed") these links. Whilst it will make the error go away temporarily, it is likely to reappear when Google next tries to crawl these URLs.

It might be preferable to return a 410 Gone for these URLs, instead of the usual 404 Not Found, to send a stronger message to Google. To tell Google that these pages literally have "Gone" (if they previously existed), rather than "not found" - which could be the result of a temporary error.

Or, simply ignore the error in Google Search Console (formerly GWT).

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  • Would there be any negative consequence of just ignoring the error in Search Console? In other words does the presence of the 404 cause any issues?
    – Cairns80
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 12:26
  • No. The 404 report is simply for your benefit. The only time it would be a problem is if these were supposed to be valid URLs on your site, then it would indicate that something was wrong.
    – MrWhite
    Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 12:46

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