With some information we've gathered recently about Google (and sometimes Bing), we are looking for answers to some questions this week: Is it a bad sign if Google keeps crawling 404 pages? Should we be worried about ranking loss after switching to HTTPS?

Goossip #1

If Google is crawling your 404 pages, it is generally a good sign

A user was concerned that Googlebot was crawling non-existent pages (returning 404) and thought it was wasting the crawl budget. John Mueller addressed the user's concerns, stating that repeated crawling of 404 pages is not a problem and can even be interpreted as a positive sign. This means Google wants to get more content from the site.
Why do these repeated crawls continue despite the 404 errors? Because Google is re-crawling to check if the disappearance of these pages was accidental. Switching to a 410 (page permanently deleted) status won't change much, but it may allow Google to remove these pages from its index a bit faster.

Trustworthiness rating: ⭐⭐⭐ We agree!

As some people still think, a 404 page is not necessarily a page that needs to be "fixed," only if there is no obvious issue. Therefore, Google tends to check again a few times "just in case." As John Mueller said, this should be seen more as good news because it shows that Google is paying attention to your site.

Goossip #2

Ranking loss after switching to HTTPS is temporary and normal

The owner of a 15-year-old finance site was worried about losing his top 3 rankings on Google after switching to HTTPS. He also changed his WordPress theme and updated his content, and was asking whether he needed to revert to HTTP.

John Mueller explains that switching to HTTPS is similar to a full site migration. Each URL needs to be recognized, re-crawled, and reprocessed individually. You just need to be patient. He also mentions that he should avoid using the URL removal tool, as it could hide the new URLs in HTTPS as well.

Trustworthiness rating: ⭐⭐⭐ We agree!

This is a common fear and it needs to be alleviated. The transition to HTTPS is a process that Google has been dealing with for years. There is no need to have a specific concern about this.