Webmaster tools crawl errors
-
Hi there,
iv been tracking my webmaster tools crawl errors for a while now(6 months) and im noticing some pages that are far gone 404 are still poping out on the crawl errors. - that pages have no data for xml linking, and remote linking are from pages that are far gone 404 also.
that pages have 404 error page + redirect to homepage, and google still notice them with old cache content.
does someone have a clue why is this happening?
-
Thank you very much Dana for the superb answer!
any clue for how much this errors are critical for my website seo? (is this problem worth fixing)
-
Hi!
Have you verified that there is a proper 301 redirect from the old URL's? If, for example, there is a 302 instead, I wouldn't be surprised if Google kept the old info in the index, as you have sort of said "I'll be back soon at this old address, just wait a minute (or year)".
Do you have an example URL for us that we could take a look at?
-
Hi Dana,
If your looking for someone to confirm what Dana said she is 100% right.
If your using a data base like WordPress it is posable for it to hold old pages and serve them. Make sure your host knows of your problem if you are using a CMS.
Hope this helps,
Thomas
-
Yes, I understand this issue very well and have seen it many times. Most often, it is happening because another of your pages that is being indexed is still referencing those pages. Please forgive Google, it is but a humble, not-so-intelligent bot (despite what the world would have you think). If you keep referencing a page that doesn't exist, Googlebot will say to itself "but it does exist! it does!" and keep indexing it, despite the 404 error. I mean, for all Google knows, it is your intention to bring that page back and maybe you just screwed up and it is 404-ing, you know?
Here's the remedy:
Do a content audit. Here's a great post on how to do that: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/how-to-perform-a-content-audit/
You will discover many things, without a doubt, including pages that are linking to these 404 pages. Decide what to do with those pages, i.e. nix them, re-build them, whatever. If you have pages in Google that you really do want out of the index and those same pages are 404-ing....simply go to your Google Webmaster Tools Account and in the left nav select "Google Index" and then "Remove URLs." Then simply click the box that says "create a new removal request" and enter the desired URL into that Box. Provided your page meets the requirements (and if it's producing a 404 error it does) Google will prioritize its removal. Under no circumstances should this be confused with the disavow tool. Just to make that clear.
I hope this helps. Any questions and I'm happy to help further if I can.
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
-
How to Diagnose "Crawled - Currently Not Indexed" in Google Search Console
The new Google Search Console gives a ton of information about which pages were excluded and why, but one that I'm struggling with is "crawled - currently not indexed". I have some clients that have fallen into this pit and I've identified one reason why it's occurring on some of them - they have multiple websites covering the same information (local businesses) - but others I'm completely flummoxed. Does anyone have any experience figuring this one out?
Reporting & Analytics | | brettmandoes2 -
Webmaster Tools and Geolocation
Our site gets a significant amount of traffic from Venezuela, about 9% based on our Google Analytics (the US being 63%). According to Webmaster Tools we get 48% of our clicks from Venezuela. That discrepancy is massive, considering we are an English site. My theory is that they are not allowed/capable of using secure search in Venezuela for some legal reason and therefore their searches are much more 'visible'. Does anyone have any insight?
Reporting & Analytics | | evansluke0 -
How can I see what Google sees when it crawls my page?
In other words, how can see the text and what not it sees from start to finish on each page. I know there was a site, but I can't remember it.
Reporting & Analytics | | tiffany11030 -
Backlink Tool Finding Links That Aren't Visible
I'm using a variety of backlink toolsl; OSE, SEM Rush, Link Research Tools and Google Webmaster Tools. On some occasions the tools are telling me there is a link to my site on a certain page, however when I open that page I can't see any mention of my company. I have run all these reports today, so I think it is unlikely that Google is using old data. Does anyone know why this happens and if I should still be concerned about links that I cannot see but backlink tools are telling me are there? Thanks guys.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Get a list of robots.txt blocked URL and tell Google to crawl and index it.
Some of my key pages got blocked by robots.txt file and I have made required changes in robots.txt file but how can I get the blocked URL's list. My webmaster page Health>blocked URL's shows only number not the blocked URL's.My first question is from where can I fetch these blocked URL's and how can I get them back in searches, One other interesting point I see is that blocked pages are still showing up in searches.Title is appearing fine but Description shows blocked by robots.txt file. I need urgent recommendation as I do not want to see drop in my traffic any more.
Reporting & Analytics | | csfarnsworth0 -
2 days in the past week Google has crawled 10x the average pages crawled per day. What does this mean?
For the past 3 months my site www.dlawlesshardware.com has had an average of about 400 pages crawled per day by google. We have just over 6,000 indexed pages. However, twice in the last week, Google crawled an enormous percentage of my site. After averaging 400 pages crawled for the last 3 months, the last 4 days of crawl stats say the following. 2/1 - 4,373 pages crawled 2/2 - 367 pages crawled 2/3 - 4,777 pages crawled 2/4 - 437 pages crawled What is the deal with these enormous spike in pages crawled per day? Of course, there are also corresponding spikes in kilobytes downloaded per day. Essentially, Google averages crawling about 6% of my site a day. But twice in the last week, Google decided to crawl just under 80% of my site. Has this happened to anyone else? Any ideas? I have literally no idea what this means and I haven't found anyone else with the same problem. Only people complaining about massive DROPS in pages crawled per day. Here is a screenshot from Webmaster Tools: http://imgur.com/kpnQ8EP The drop in time spent downloading a page corresponded exactly to an improvement in our CSS. So that probably doesn't need to be considered, although I'm up for any theories from anyone about anything.
Reporting & Analytics | | dellcos0 -
Rank tracker tool - seomoz
Hi All, I have noticed that ranks in the tool -rank tracker are not correct for my keywords sometimes. Does anybody else has experienced this? Isn't it real time updated? What other free rank tracker tool you guys would suggest which can send you weekly accurate updates? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | EG0CENTRIX0 -
Increase number of pages crawled
Only one page is being crawled, how do I increase the number to include most of our site?
Reporting & Analytics | | NorthCoast0