My google dashboard sees a phantom robots.txt file?

Hi all,

I've got two sites parked on the same IP both of which are suddenly getting ERRORS on my google dashboard in the sitemap section. The error says:

Network unreachable: robots.txt unreachable
We were unable to crawl your Sitemap because we found a robots.txt file at the root of your site but were unable to download it. Please ensure that it is accessible or remove it completely.

I hadn't changed the robots.txt file for either of them, but I rebuilt them anyway. Resubmitted, and 8 hours later got the same errors. I then removed the robots.txt files completely from the root of each add-on domain... errors again. I double-checked the root directory that these two domains are parked on, but there is no robots.txt file at all.

After some internet searching, it was suggested I call my hosting company to see if they'd changed anything on the server. I did, and they assured me they hadn't. They suggested I contact google.

I was wondering if any of you had experienced the same or similar problems, or if this was just a google hiccup that would disappear after a couple of days. It's been four days now, and I don't want this to hurt my existing indexing (would it?)

Thanks in advance!

 

That sounds pretty strange. I sure hope it won't hurt your existing indexing- I really don't know. One thing though, it seems that almost anything nowadays can influence Google in either direction.

 

It happens sometimes, Most often such errors ho away in 2-3 days.

 

Thanks Notorious. I was worried google would de-index pages thinking I'm trying to protect the site against spiders.

 

Sometimes if your server is offline for maint. or w/e google won't be able to grab the file at that time but will pick it up on it's next visit.

 

Ive had this a couple of times, infact ive got 1 site saying it just now, a new one.

The last time it happened it cured itself after a week or so, didnt seem to make any dif to my site.

 

I don't think it will make any damage, because its just an error. What i could harm is the new indexing, until its cured i guess Google will not continue indexing your site (i mean, adding new pages, nut old one, already indexed wont suffer).

 

Just in case anyone is looking this post up months/years later, this problem corrected itself after 5 or 6 days. I think google just farted when it crawled my site.

 

I suggest you to change the server !! Else u will get some ranking loss in future !