Thread: Unpublished Attachment ID crawled by Google bot

Unpublished Attachment ID crawled by Google bot

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this is native to CP or the way WP works or SEO settings, but recently I got flagged for multiple errors in the Google Search Console pointing to Attachment IDs (Pictures attached to the Ads)

I understand that it would be normal if an ad was published then expired, the Google bot will flag the linked images as not found given the item is no longer published.

But, what's worrisome, is that some of those attachments were not even published (Ad is still pending), yet Google was able to crawl the images linked to that Pending Ad and flag them as 404.

How is that possible?