I have this error in a whole host of my sites that run on a specific
hosting company:
Network unreachable: DNS issue
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please
ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the
location you provided and then resubmit.
Nothing has changed from my end with sitemaps etc but now sites such
as www.fotoviva.co.uk have been de-listed from Google.
I have asked my hosting company to look into it but no joy. This is a
business I run so need someone from Google to help me understand and
fix this asap!
The consensus seems to be that it is more than likely that Googlebot
is being blocked from some DNS servers, in your case
ns1.viperdesign.co.uk & ns2.viperdesign.co.uk. However the evidence
for this is anecdotal at the moment. What I will say is that yesterday
I switched one of my affected site Name Servers and it fixed the
problem overnight - not proof exactly but it does show that the
problem is to do with the DNS servers themselves NOT with the sites.
> I have this error in a whole host of my sites that run on a specific
> hosting company:
> Network unreachable: DNS issue
> We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please
> ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the
> location you provided and then resubmit.
> Nothing has changed from my end with sitemaps etc but now sites such
> aswww.fotoviva.co.ukhave been de-listed from Google.
> I have asked my hosting company to look into it but no joy. This is a
> business I run so need someone from Google to help me understand and
> fix this asap!
> The consensus seems to be that it is more than likely that Googlebot
> is being blocked from some DNS servers, in your case
> ns1.viperdesign.co.uk & ns2.viperdesign.co.uk. However the evidence
> for this is anecdotal at the moment. What I will say is that yesterday
> I switched one of my affected site Name Servers and it fixed the
> problem overnight - not proof exactly but it does show that the
> problem is to do with the DNS servers themselves NOT with the sites.
> I will post more when I know more.
> Hope this helps.
> Regards
> On 18 Nov, 15:43, Jason Wickens wrote:
> > I have this error in a whole host of my sites that run on a specific
> > hosting company:
> > Network unreachable: DNS issue
> > We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please
> > ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the
> > location you provided and then resubmit.
> > Nothing has changed from my end with sitemaps etc but now sites such
> > aswww.fotoviva.co.ukhavebeen de-listed from Google.
> > I have asked my hosting company to look into it but no joy. This is a
> > business I run so need someone from Google to help me understand and
> > fix this asap!
> Thanks, any help is appreciated as I am losing business in the run up
> to Christmas!
The fact that this has happened to countless site owners, and for SIX
(6) Christmas's in a row, proves it's G that's doing it. But of
course they won't admit it, they always blame the host (as do all the
G mouthpieces around here). Sure, it CAN be caused by a host blocking
IP's they should not be blocking, but that's rare, and more; so why
would so many site owners' hosts suddenly all start blocking G IP's??
Not gonna happen.
Although what your saying is essentially a conspiracy theory, I do
have some sympathy and I speak from experience as I currently have 30+
site in this position.
The problem is this, we don't have evidence either way. I have been
doing some experimenting and I can PROVE without doubt that the issue
is DNS based.
The question are:
Did Google make a change to the Gbot on the 7th Nov that is affecting
a subset of Nameservers? If so, why keep it quiet? Why not fix it?
or...
Did a subset of Nameservers get updated/changed on the 7th Nov? If so,
why has no-one come forward and said "here is what happened & here is
how to fix it"
Like I said, the trouble is we have no proof either way at the moment.
> > Thanks, any help is appreciated as I am losing business in the run up
> > to Christmas!
> The fact that this has happened to countless site owners, and for SIX
> (6) Christmas's in a row, proves it's G that's doing it. But of
> course they won't admit it, they always blame the host (as do all the
> G mouthpieces around here). Sure, it CAN be caused by a host blocking
> IP's they should not be blocking, but that's rare, and more; so why
> would so many site owners' hosts suddenly all start blocking G IP's??
> Not gonna happen.
I've been looking into this issue by looking at some of the sites
mentioned here. As far as I can tell, things should be back to normal
at the moment and there shouldn't be any long-term effects based on
this. Keep in mind that error/warning messages in Webmaster Tools will
generally remain visible for a while so it might take a bit before
they disappear there as well. I'll let you know more as I know
more :-).
So, are you saying that it is indeed something occuring on your end?
If so can you enlighten us as to what has happened - after chasing my
tail for the last 10 days I would really love to know.
> I've been looking into this issue by looking at some of the sites
> mentioned here. As far as I can tell, things should be back to normal
> at the moment and there shouldn't be any long-term effects based on
> this. Keep in mind that error/warning messages in Webmaster Tools will
> generally remain visible for a while so it might take a bit before
> they disappear there as well. I'll let you know more as I know
> more :-).
After discussions with my hosting company and a DNS health check they
changed the PTR on the nameservers and my sitemaps have now been
accepted again - just waiting for G to index them again - hope this
will not have adverse affects on ranking as we worked hard to get
where we were?
> So, are you saying that it is indeed something occuring on your end?
> If so can you enlighten us as to what has happened - after chasing my
> tail for the last 10 days I would really love to know.
> Regards
> On Nov 19, 2:01 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > Hi guys
> > I've been looking into this issue by looking at some of the sites
> > mentioned here. As far as I can tell, things should be back to normal
> > at the moment and there shouldn't be any long-term effects based on
> > this. Keep in mind that error/warning messages in Webmaster Tools will
> > generally remain visible for a while so it might take a bit before
> > they disappear there as well. I'll let you know more as I know
> > more :-).
Just looked in webmaster tools and the sitemap is showing DNS errors
again now. I know John said error messages would remain for a while
but it seems like Google isn't going to index fotoviva until the urls
can be found again. The lead up to Christmas is our busiest time and
without customers finding us we are losing money all the time. PLEASE
INDEX OUR PAGES!!!
> After discussions with my hosting company and a DNS health check they
> changed the PTR on the nameservers and my sitemaps have now been
> accepted again - just waiting for G to index them again - hope this
> will not have adverse affects on ranking as we worked hard to get
> where we were?
> Thanks
> On Nov 19, 4:53 pm, BuildArk wrote:
> > Hi John
> > Thanks for keeping us in the picture.
> > So, are you saying that it is indeed something occuring on your end?
> > If so can you enlighten us as to what has happened - after chasing my
> > tail for the last 10 days I would really love to know.
> > Regards
> > On Nov 19, 2:01 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > > Hi guys
> > > I've been looking into this issue by looking at some of the sites
> > > mentioned here. As far as I can tell, things should be back to normal
> > > at the moment and there shouldn't be any long-term effects based on
> > > this. Keep in mind that error/warning messages in Webmaster Tools will
> > > generally remain visible for a while so it might take a bit before
> > > they disappear there as well. I'll let you know more as I know
> > > more :-).
Just to let you know what is happening with my sites...
I have changed the DNS on about 30% of them and resubmitted the
sitemaps.
I have resubmitted the sitemaps on all the sites that were causing me
problems.
I have about 10% of sites that never even got the DNS Issue error.
Currently Google is saying that it has successfully downloaded ALL the
sitemaps (no DNS errors!) but in the sitemap summary section it is
saying that "Indexed URLs in Sitemap" is still zero. This may be just
a lag in reporting as the only errors I can see are in the Web crawl
errors section and they are all dated Prior to me switching any DNS.
I am going to wait and see what happens now - If the problem is on my
end then theoretically the DNS errors will return on the sites that I
didn't change the nameservers on.
> Just looked in webmaster tools and the sitemap is showing DNS errors
> again now. I know John said error messages would remain for a while
> but it seems like Google isn't going to index fotoviva until the urls
> can be found again. The lead up to Christmas is our busiest time and
> without customers finding us we are losing money all the time. PLEASE
> INDEX OUR PAGES!!!
> Jas
> On Nov 19, 4:59 pm, Jason Wickens wrote:
> > After discussions with my hosting company and a DNS health check they
> > changed the PTR on the nameservers and my sitemaps have now been
> > accepted again - just waiting for G to index them again - hope this
> > will not have adverse affects on ranking as we worked hard to get
> > where we were?
> > Thanks
> > On Nov 19, 4:53 pm, BuildArk wrote:
> > > Hi John
> > > Thanks for keeping us in the picture.
> > > So, are you saying that it is indeed something occuring on your end?
> > > If so can you enlighten us as to what has happened - after chasing my
> > > tail for the last 10 days I would really love to know.
> > > Regards
> > > On Nov 19, 2:01 pm, JohnMu wrote:
> > > > Hi guys
> > > > I've been looking into this issue by looking at some of the sites
> > > > mentioned here. As far as I can tell, things should be back to normal
> > > > at the moment and there shouldn't be any long-term effects based on
> > > > this. Keep in mind that error/warning messages in Webmaster Tools will
> > > > generally remain visible for a while so it might take a bit before
> > > > they disappear there as well. I'll let you know more as I know
> > > > more :-).
> > > > Thanks for your patience!
> > > > John- Hide quoted text -
Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
BuildArk, could you post a URL of a site where you're seeing zero
indexed URLs in Sitemaps? Generally speaking, those counts are created
separately based on your Sitemap files, so it might be that it's just
a matter of time until we re-process the contents of your Sitemap
files, but it may be good to double-check while we're at it.
Jason, I assume this is the site you mentioned in the original
posting, right? I'll take a look and see what's happening there.
Thanks John I appreciate you helping out. Yes fotoviva.co.uk is the
main one but I have a few others which have the same problem, all
hosted by the same company. Since changing the PRT on the namservers
the sitemaps have at least been accepted, but now show unreachable
errors in the sitemaps, and none of the urls in the sitemaps have been
indexed. If you need to check any other sites try www.viperdesign.net and www.earthbeauty.co.uk which are on the same host.
Would we have had problems if we had never submitted sitemaps I
wonder?
> Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
> are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
> in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
> now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
> BuildArk, could you post a URL of a site where you're seeing zero
> indexed URLs in Sitemaps? Generally speaking, those counts are created
> separately based on your Sitemap files, so it might be that it's just
> a matter of time until we re-process the contents of your Sitemap
> files, but it may be good to double-check while we're at it.
> Jason, I assume this is the site you mentioned in the original
> posting, right? I'll take a look and see what's happening there.
Hi Jason
Thanks for the URLs. This issue is independent of Sitemaps usage --
but that's where you would see any errors first, so it's a kind of
early warning system for webmasters :-). It's also a great way to
check to see if any access issues have been resolved, you can just re-
submit your Sitemap file and check the status (which should update
within an hour - often much earlier).
Looking at those sites, it looks like we've been able to grab the
Sitemap files successfully, meaning things should be back to normal
soon.
> Although what your saying is essentially a conspiracy theory, I do
> have some sympathy and I speak from experience as I currently have 30+
> site in this position.
I don't see any "conspiracy" anywhere. But I guess that would depend
on why they've been doing it.
> The problem is this, we don't have evidence either way. I have been
> doing some experimenting and I can PROVE without doubt that the issue
> is DNS based.
No evidence? I provided it: "The fact that this has happened to
countless site owners, and for SIX (6) Christmas's in a row, proves
it's G that's doing it. Sure, it CAN be caused by a host blocking
IP's they should not be blocking, but that's rare, and more so; why
would so many site owners' hosts suddenly all start blocking G IP's??
Not gonna happen."
Do you think all that is just a coincidence? Thousands of sites
owners, all at the same time every year, just a coincidence? No way.
I've been following this for years now, and the pattern is the same
every year around Sept.-Nov. All the webmaster forums have similar
threads and posts about "strange unexplained" things happening during
this period every year, causing the deletion of white-hat websites.
It has personally happened to me SIX YEARS in a ROW. For the past 3
years, it's been this "Network unreachable" problem causing page and
site deletions. Apparently there is indeed something to this as John
alluded to in his post.
> Did Google make a change to the Gbot on the 7th Nov that is affecting
> a subset of Nameservers? If so, why keep it quiet? Why not fix it?
> or...Did a subset of Nameservers get updated/changed on the 7th Nov? If so,
> why has no-one come forward and said "here is what happened & here is
> how to fix it"
> > > Thanks, any help is appreciated as I am losing business in the run up
> > > to Christmas!
> > The fact that this has happened to countless site owners, and for SIX
> > (6) Christmas's in a row, proves it's G that's doing it. But of
> > course they won't admit it, they always blame the host (as do all the
> > G mouthpieces around here). Sure, it CAN be caused by a host blocking
> > IP's they should not be blocking, but that's rare, and more; so why
> > would so many site owners' hosts suddenly all start blocking G IP's??
> > Not gonna happen.- Hide quoted text -
> Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
> are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
> in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
> now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
Thanks for that bit of info, and anything else you can provide. ;-)
Chris
Talk to your hoster and demand they fix the DNS issues.
In addition it's highly possible the firewall is blocking some or all
Goglebots by IP. Again your hoster has to chase that down and remove
any blocks.
They will often deny it. mostly through not even knowing what the
firewall does precisely and not willing to check.
> I have this error in a whole host of my sites that run on a specific
> hosting company:
> Network unreachable: DNS issue
> We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please
> ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the
> location you provided and then resubmit.
> Nothing has changed from my end with sitemaps etc but now sites such
> aswww.fotoviva.co.ukhave been de-listed from Google.
> I have asked my hosting company to look into it but no joy. This is a
> business I run so need someone from Google to help me understand and
> fix this asap!
where can i send you all the URLs that has been completely deleted
from google (Indexed URLs: 0)
so you can have a look.
My portal has now 5.741 unreachable URLs (Indexed URLs:0)
> Talk to your hoster and demand they fix the DNS issues.
> In addition it's highly possible the firewall is blocking some or all
> Goglebots by IP. Again your hoster has to chase that down and remove
> any blocks.
> They will often deny it. mostly through not even knowing what the
> firewall does precisely and not willing to check.
> On Nov 18, 10:43 am, Jason Wickens wrote:
> > I have this error in a whole host of my sites that run on a specific
> > hosting company:
> > Network unreachable: DNS issue
> > We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please
> > ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the
> > location you provided and then resubmit.
> > Nothing has changed from my end with sitemaps etc but now sites such
> > aswww.fotoviva.co.ukhavebeen de-listed from Google.
> > I have asked my hosting company to look into it but no joy. This is a
> > business I run so need someone from Google to help me understand and
> > fix this asap!
We have also been hit by this DNS issue. Our indexed pages have
reduced considerably over the past two weeks. On Nov 19, Webmaster
Tool showed 95 URL Errors on our Sitemaps. Google also dropped our
home page from its index and we lost our hard earned rankings for
almost all of our home page targeted Keywords. This has affected our
business very badly. Now Google has re-indexed our Home page on
November 19, 2008. The Webmaster tools also show the URL errors on
sitemaps have now reduced to 43. But still, our home page ranking
hasn't been able to restore to the previous positions. (e.g. until
last week, our site was ranked among the top 3 results for majority of
our major keywords. But now, our site's ranking had dropped to the
positions as low as 80s and 90s.)
It's also important to mention that we have always used white hat SEO
techniques and remained on the top positions. Could you please give us
an idea that how long it could take before we get back our old ranking
positions.
> Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
> are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
> in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
> now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
> BuildArk, could you post a URL of a site where you're seeing zero
> indexed URLs in Sitemaps? Generally speaking, those counts are created
> separately based on your Sitemap files, so it might be that it's just
> a matter of time until we re-process the contents of your Sitemap
> files, but it may be good to double-check while we're at it.
> Jason, I assume this is the site you mentioned in the original
> posting, right? I'll take a look and see what's happening there.
We have also been hit by this DNS issue. Our indexed pages have
reduced considerably over the past two weeks. On Nov 19, Webmaster
Tool showed 95 URL Errors on our Sitemaps. Google also dropped our
home page from its index and we lost our hard earned rankings for
almost all of our home page targeted Keywords. This has affected our
business very badly. Now Google has re-indexed our Home page on
November 19, 2008. The Webmaster tools also show the URL errors on
sitemaps have now reduced to 43. But still, our home page ranking
hasn't been able to restore to the previous positions. (e.g. until
last week, our site was ranked among the top 3 results for majority of
our major keywords. But now, our site's ranking had dropped to the
positions as low as 80s and 90s.)
It's also important to mention that we have always used white hat SEO
techniques and remained on the top positions. Could you please give us
an idea that how long it could take before we get back our old ranking
positions.
> Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
> are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
> in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
> now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
> BuildArk, could you post a URL of a site where you're seeing zero
> indexed URLs in Sitemaps? Generally speaking, those counts are created
> separately based on your Sitemap files, so it might be that it's just
> a matter of time until we re-process the contents of your Sitemap
> files, but it may be good to double-check while we're at it.
> Jason, I assume this is the site you mentioned in the original
> posting, right? I'll take a look and see what's happening there.
We have also been hit by this DNS issue. Our indexed pages have
reduced considerably over the past two weeks. On Nov 19, Webmaster
Tool showed 95 URL Errors on our Sitemaps. Google also dropped our
home page from its index and we lost our hard earned rankings for
almost all of our home page targeted Keywords. This has affected our
business very badly. Now Google has re-indexed our Home page on
November 19, 2008. The Webmaster tools also show the URL errors on
sitemaps have now reduced to 43. But still, our home page ranking
hasn't been able to restore to the previous positions. (e.g. until
last week, our site was ranked among the top 3 results for majority of
our major keywords. But now, our site's ranking had dropped to the
positions as low as 80s and 90s.)
It's also important to mention that we have always used white hat SEO
techniques and remained on the top positions. Could you please give us
an idea that how long it could take before we get back our old ranking
positions.
> Yes, we changed something on our side. I don't know what the details
> are however; if I have something which I can share, I'll post it here
> in the groups. At any rate, from what I can see it should be resolved
> now, so let's take a look at the remaining things :-)
> BuildArk, could you post a URL of a site where you're seeing zero
> indexed URLs in Sitemaps? Generally speaking, those counts are created
> separately based on your Sitemap files, so it might be that it's just
> a matter of time until we re-process the contents of your Sitemap
> files, but it may be good to double-check while we're at it.
> Jason, I assume this is the site you mentioned in the original
> posting, right? I'll take a look and see what's happening there.
Looking at your site, it appears that we used to index your homepage
as "/" -- now it's indexed as "/index.aspx" (which is also where "/"
is redirecting to). Technically, since your site is 301 redirecting to
that URL, it's hard for us to use "/" as your homepage and I assume
this might be a part of the problem. You could help to speed this up
by using the content shown on /index.aspx as the homepage (and perhaps
even 301 redirecting from "/index.aspx" to "/"). That said, these
things usually clear up in a short time as we continue to crawl and
index your site, so I personally wouldn't change anything just for
this (but I'd keep it in mind as you continue to develop your site).
Thanks a ton John
Your answer has really helped us in solving the issue. We have
reverted the redirection from index.aspx and hopefully will regain our
ranking very soon.
Thanks for your kind help man.
> Looking at your site, it appears that we used to index your homepage
> as "/" -- now it's indexed as "/index.aspx" (which is also where "/"
> is redirecting to). Technically, since your site is 301 redirecting to
> that URL, it's hard for us to use "/" as your homepage and I assume
> this might be a part of the problem. You could help to speed this up
> by using the content shown on /index.aspx as the homepage (and perhaps
> even 301 redirecting from "/index.aspx" to "/"). That said, these
> things usually clear up in a short time as we continue to crawl and
> index your site, so I personally wouldn't change anything just for
> this (but I'd keep it in mind as you continue to develop your site).
