RSS Feed Errors in Google

[Hakkasan]

We recently (2 months ago) launched RSS feeds for the category pages on our site. Last week we started seeing error pages in Webmaster Tools' Crawl Errors report pop up for feeds of old pages that have been deleted from the site, deleted from the sitemap, and not in Google's index since long before we launched the RSS feeds.

Example: www.mysite.com/super-old-page/feed/

I checked and both the URL for the feed and the URL for the actual page are returning 404 statuses.

www.mysite.com/super-old-page/ is also showing up in our Crawl Errors. Its been deleted for months but Webmaster Tools is very slow to remove the page from their Crawl Error report.

Where is Google finding these feeds that never existed?

[Cyrus-Shepard]

These are often hard to diagnose, but you have a few options for digging out the source of these links. First of all, you want to make absolutely sure they aren't coming from your site. Unfortunately, most of the time we usually miss something when removing old pages, and our own site is the cause of the problem.

1. Check Google Webmaster Tools - In the same place they list the 404 errors, they will often tell you where they found the page under a column named "Linked From" Here's a screenshot: https://skitch.com/cyrusshepard/8jrqx/webmaster-tools-crawl-errors-http-truefabrications.com

Clicking on the pages listed will often uncover the source of the link.

2. Try Screaming Frog or Xenu to crawl your site and see if the RSS feeds or links appear.

3. Or one of the SEOmoz crawlers, such as the PRO web app or the Custom Crawl tool.

Unfortunately, if the pages aren't coming from your site, (they could be coming from old feeds that others scraped a long time ago) then about the only thing you can do is file a removal request with Google. This can be a slow and tedious process if you have a number of pages.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!