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Recently, without changing anything on my website, Google search console started flagging 80 index coverage errors, shown as "Server error (5xx)". When I go look into it, what it's flagging are php files in the /wp-includes/ folder, which Google shouldn't be even trying to index. My xml sitemap doesn't include these files. I don't understand why google is trying to index and then flagging them.

Any ideas on why this is happening and what I can do to stop it?

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    The only reason Google would be trying to index a file is if there were a link to it somewhere. You shouldn't have any links to wp-includes anywhere, but you might if you have directory indexing enabled on your server. If you visit, in the browser, yourwebsite.com/wp-includes/ do you see a list of links to files and folders? You shouldn't. If you do contact your host and ask them to disable directory indexing on your account.
    – Jacob Peattie
    Commented Jul 10, 2018 at 12:19
  • Nah, .../wp-includes/ just brings up the 404 page, as it should. There's definitely no links to wp-includes anywhere on my site. I'll get in touch with my host to see what's up.
    – Jon Fergus
    Commented Jul 11, 2018 at 17:30

2 Answers 2

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Check that wp-includes is excluded for index in robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
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The cause is automatic indexes on folders on your server. For example https://www.yoursite.com/wp-includes/ shows an index of all the files in the folder.

The solution is to turn off indexes

add this to .htaccess

Options -Indexes

If you can’t do this then tell your host to disable indexes

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