Have You Ever Gotten False or Odd Notifications from Google Webmaster Tools?
-
I just got an email for one of my client websites from Google Webmaster Tools letting me know that the Google Bot could not access the website? The notification indicated that there may be a robots.txt issue that prevented crawling, but that they would try something to crawl it again.
In this situation, we had just created a new Webmaster Tools account for the client, and there were (are) two GWT accounts now for the website, one that is incorrectly set to http://clientwebsite.com and the other that is set to www.clientwebsite.com. One of them reports zero errors, and the other reports an odd crawl error.
Anyone encountered this type of thing before?
-
Try to fetch the url as Google bot and see if the issue still remains . If it does you might need to review your robots.txt file. Else it probably was some issue GoogleBot had while it tried to crawl the site.
You will need to setup both http://clientwebsite.com and http://www.clientwebsite.com to set the Preferred domain from GWT. so its ok to have both in there. But your site should ( in most cases ) only be accessible from either the one with www or without.
-
I agree with Bradley. The two accounts in GWT are separate, so the fact that you have two should not cause an interaction.
I once got a notification about a sudden drop in traffic to my home page was listed as a "Big traffic change for top URL". It happened on Thanksgiving. It was not an error, just people are not going to visit this particular site on Thanksgiving. More of a false positive than anything.Cheers!
-
I'm not sure that I've ever got a false notification before, but I got the exact notification you are describing a while back. It seemed as though there was a problem with the robots.txt file. Turns out the domain didn't have a robots.txt file, so rather than guess Google decided to stop crawling it until I created one.
If your site doesn't have a robots.txt file, make sure you create one. If the site already has one, look over it for syntax errors that Google may be tripping over.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Search my keyword on google
When I search my keyword on google I can see my website, but when I connect to a VPN and again search it, I'm not in the search result, what happens on my website?
Reporting & Analytics | | Pintapin0 -
Alternative tools for Keyword Traffic
Hi There, Wondering if anyone has any other tools they would recommend using for finding out keyword traffic on websites. Currently (and I'm sure like most), my website is connected to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. My biggest frustration becomes the "(not set)" variable that appears when I go to review the keywords section. It's always such a large number and I have no way of finding out what people might be typing in and coming across my website. Of course, I understand the privacy factor as to why Google must do this but it's certainly difficult to analyze what's working and what's not. Any tips, tricks or suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks, Lindsay
Reporting & Analytics | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Google Crawl Stats
Hi all Wondering if anyone could help me out here. I am seeing massive variations in WMT of google crawl stats on a site I run. Just wondering if this is normal (see attached image). The site is an eccommerce site and gets a handful of new products added every couple of weeks. The total no of products is about 220k so this is only a very small %. I notice in WMT I have an amber warning under Server connectivity. About 10 days back I had warnings under DNS, Server and Robots. This was due to bad server performance. I have since moved to a new server and the other two warnings have gone back to green. I expect the Server connectivity one to update any day now. Ive included the graph for this incase it is relevant here. Many thanks for assistance. Carl crawlstats.png connect.png
Reporting & Analytics | | daedriccarl0 -
Goal tracking in Google Analytics
Hi folks I read from various sources that if you setup goals in Google Analytics each of these goals can only be fulfilled once per visit. Also some sources suggesting that only one goal from each goal group can be fulfilled per visit. On our site we have a goal for external links since this provides value to partners. Some users do open an external link in a new tab, then come back to the main site. Any further goal completions would then not get tracked. Since we apply a result based payment model for our work this means we are literally loosing money. Anyone has official info from Google on this? Can it be configured? How long is a visit? Thanks a million and have a great day. Fredrik
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify0 -
Webmaster Tools shows 0 visits, Analytics shows 1000s?
Webmaster Tools reported a "Big traffic change for top URL" for one of our sites about three and a half weeks ago. WT traffic is 0 since that date. However, our analytics data shows no significant decline in traffic. The WT alert was received on Nov. 16. There was a significant dip in GA visits Nov. 22 but it recovered and I'm seeing no other indication that this is a penalty. What could be going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | IMM0 -
Editing Google Analytics eCommerce Javascript for Volusion
Does anyone know how to edit the ecommerce javascript with Volusion dynamic variables? I thought I did it correctly but none of the information got recorded in GA. It recorded that there was a transaction made but not info on the purchase price, order #, etc. This is the current code I am using: NOTE: In Volusions customer support center they provided this information: Where Order-Specific Information is Generated Order-specific information can be generated by JavaScript on the OrderFinished.asp page within Volusion. On this page, two JavaScript arrays will be initialized that advanced users may need to be aware of. The arrays and their contents are as follow:
Reporting & Analytics | | jhooley
Order Array Contents Order[0] = Order ID
Order[1] = Unused
Order[2] = Payment Amount
Order[3] = Affiliate Commisionable Value
Order[4] = Sales Tax
Order[5] = Total Shipping Cost
Order[6] = Billing City
Order[7] = Billing State
Order[8] = Billing Country OrderDetails Array Contents OrderDetails[X][0] = Order ID
OrderDetails[X][1] = Order Detail ID
OrderDetails[X][2] = Product Code
OrderDetails[X][3] = Product Name
OrderDetails[X][4] = (unused)
OrderDetails[X][5] = Product Price
OrderDetails[X][6] = Quantity Note that in the above example, X refers to a line item number (beginning from zero). Note that there can be multiple Order Details arrays - one for each item contained within an order. I'm a newbie at Analytics installation and could really use any help. Thanks!1 -
Does Google Analytics use your data against you?
I couldn't find this question answered anywhere in Q&A, so I apologize if it's a duplicate of another post. I heard, about a year ago on either Web Pro World, or Warrior Forum that Google uses your visitor data in your Google Analytic account to rank your site. Someone said that when they took out the Google code, their site went from the third to the first page within 48 hours. That was then verified over the next couple of weeks by others. Their thought was that regardless of the optimized page and incoming link, if the site wasn't getting visitors, then it would be penalized. Since Google has the data, they would be able to use it. I then started using another, paid, solution - getclicky.com. While I like clicky, there is some info Google has that clicky doesn't, everyone integrates with Google analytics - like SEOmoz, and I'm paying a monthly fee. Now that I'm a part of a community of experts, what do you think? Have you noticed Google ranking you based on your analytics data? Has anyone experienced this, or heard about it before? Because I'd like to go back to using Google analytics. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | DallasBonsai0 -
Track Google/Bing Shopping as Referrer
Is there a way to track Google & Bing Shopping referrals independent of standard Google/Bing tracking? It would be nice if we could see the difference between Google PPC, Google Organic & Google Shopping. I notice in analytics that we get some traffic from google/ppc, some from google/organic, some from google.com/referral (not sure what this is), and some from googlebase/cse (I know this is Google shopping, but I don't think it's tracking all shopping referral visits as this).
Reporting & Analytics | | JerDoggMckoy0