Strange - Search Console page indexing "../Detected" as 404

[DanielDL]

Anyone seen this lately?

All of a sudden Google Search Console is insisting in Page indexing that there is a 404 for a page that has never existed on our client's site:

https://........com.au/Detected

We've noticed this across a number of sites, precisely in this way with a capitalised "/Detected"

To me it looks like something spammy is being submitted to the SERPs (somehow) and Google is trying to index that and then getting a 404.

Naturally MOZ isn't picking it up, cause the page simply never existed - it's just happening in Search Console

It comes and it goes in the 404 alerts in Console and is really annoying. I reckon it started happening late 2022.

[DanielDL]

Thanks @Chbaca - I reckon it's some kind of spam bot (?) because it is precisely written in this way ".../Detected" and is across multiple sites that have no relation to one another and are in some cases on different servers altogether. I have a sneaking suspicion there is some kind of spammy bot that tries to look for the presence of a malicious page and somehow this is being submitted to index.

Anyway, thanks for noting it, we'll just do 301 if it keeps cropping up.

[Chbaca]

@DanielDL - might it be a url that someone requested indexing for either recently or in the past? We have seen some 404 being detected because some requested indexing by url. If it was requested a 301 should fix the 404 error in GSC.