Blogger (Blogspot) Server Error 5xx: Indexing Issue, Fix, Update

Blogs hosted on Google's Blogger platform recently having an indexing issue, specifically the Server Error 5xx. Many users are reporting the problem to the Blogger community forum since the first week of June, and still a trending issue. When trying to inspect a URL via the Search Console, it will show an "Indexing Request Rejected" message most of the time.

Google's Product Experts or the community contributors often reply to commenters that the probable cause of the Server error (5xx) is a glitch between the Google Search Console and the Blogger platform, and not with the blogs since they are fully accessible. In that case, it's not a persistent problem. Some pages will be indexed regularly, while others will be delayed, and the worst is being deindexed. Google considers many factors for indexing a page, but having a crawler error is an annoying one.

Google officials don't release a statement yet regarding the issue. However, Google's Product Experts often cite that they already reported the case and said that the Google team is investigating it. At the same time, they also suggested a "fix" for the users. [November 2021 Update] The server error 5xx issue on Blogger blogs has now been fixed.

How to fix Server Error 5xx in Blogspot?

The Server Error 5xx in Blogspot/Blogger is still not fixed, but the following guide will help Google appropriately index your blog.

Step 1: Check your robots.txt

Open your browser and enter your Blogger link appended with "/robots.txt" at the end.

For example, https://bp.blogspot.com/robots.txt

If you see the lines of text like the following, you're robots.txt is in the default mode, and you don't need to proceed in the next step. Otherwise, it is recommended to update it.

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google

Disallow:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /search

Allow: /

Sitemap: https://bp.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml

Step 2: Update your robots.txt

• Log in to your Blogger account.
• Go to Settings.
• Scroll down and find the Crawler and indexing section.
• Toggle off the buttons for Custom robots.txt and Custom robots header tags.

Doing the procedure will revert the correct robots.txt of your Blogspot blog.

Step 3: Wait it out

Google team doesn't release any official statement yet regarding Server Error 5xx on Blogger blogs. So after checking that you have the default robots.txt, patiently wait it out.

Additional notes from Google's Product Experts:

You don't need to submit each new URL via the Search console.
The Search console tool is for diagnostic purposes and not for faster indexing.

Image of Google Search Console's "URL Inspection" showing the Crawl Error - Failed: Server error (5xx) for Blogspot blog.

What is Server Error 5xx?

A server error (5xx) is an HTTP Status Code returned by a server when a client submits a valid request to the server, but the server cannot complete the request successfully.

5xx refers to any HTTP status code that begins with 5, including the 500, 502, and 503 errors, among others.

According to Google, when it comes to crawling, 5xx server errors prompt its crawlers to slow down with crawling temporarily. As a result, already indexed URLs are preserved in the index but eventually dropped.

Moreover, Googlebot decreases the crawl rate for the site. The crawl rate decreases in direct proportion to the number of individual URLs returning a server error. Google's indexing pipeline removes URLs that persistently return a server error from the index.

The most common 5xx (server errors) are 500 (internal server error), 502 (bad gateway), and 503 (service unavailable).

Blogspot Server Error 5xx Case

In the case of the Blogspot blogs, there are no server downtimes. All blogs are available. However, Google Search Console is still giving Server Error 5xx to all Blogger blogs. According to Google's Products Experts, the cause of the problem might be a glitch with Blogger CMS or Search console.

What can you say about the Blogspot server error 5xx indexing issue? You can leave your comment below.