Category_index.asp generating bad links?

[JSCWebK]

Looking at our Crawl Errors report in Google Search Console, there are a number of entries being generated to old categories on our store that no longer exist. In the Linked From tab, it lists pages, mostly always including category_index.asp, and when I visit that page, the link that is being reported as a 404 is not on that page.

I am trying to figure out where and/or how these 404s are being generated. We're accumulating about 50 error pages per week to pages that don't exist anymore, and it's not outside websites linking back to us. They're coming from our own site, but when I check the page that Google says is linking to the page, the link isn't there.

Anyone have any insight on this?

I'd consider re-generating a sitemap and re-submitting, but I'm not sure if that will have any detrimental effects, if that's not what is causing this issue.

[DeanP]

That is strange. Try this: go to example.com/sitemap.xml, press CTRL+F, search for something that doesn't exist. This will let you determine whether your store is generating links to things that don't exist, or whether the problem is on Google's side.