Google On 404 Errors And Ranking Drops

In a Google Office Hours podcast, Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about 404 Page Not Found errors that coincided with a drop in rankings. Fake External 404 ErrorsThere are probably many reasons for 404 errors created by bots. Google Answers The QuestionThe person asking the question correlated a drop in rankings with 404 Page Not Found server responses. This is the question that was asked:“False 404 URLs hitting my website from external source, could this be related to ranking drop? But if that’s not the case then the ranking drops are pure coincidence and the real reasons lie elswhere.