WebMaster Tools keeps showing old 404 error but doesn't show a "Linked From" url. Why is that?
-
Hello Moz Community.
I have a question about 404 crawl errors in WebmasterTools, a while ago we had an internal linking problem regarding some links formed in a wrong way (a loop was making links on the fly), this error was identified and fixed back then but before it was fixed google got to index lots of those malformed pages. Recently we see in our WebMaster account that some of this links still appearing as 404 but we currently don't have that issue or any internal link pointing to any of those URLs and what confuses us even more is that WebMaster doesn't show anything in the "Linked From" tab where it usually does for this type of errors, so we are wondering what this means, could be that they still in google's cache or memory? we are not really sure.
If anyone has an idea of what this errors showing up now means we would really appreciate the help. Thanks.
-
Hi Jane, thanks for the follow up. Every time we see errors showing up in WMT (mainly 404's) we remove the URL's right away and indeed we see the errors going down every 4-5 days (under HTML improvements).
I am just surprised, that if we would not use the URL removal tool, how long it takes for Google to actually remove 404's from their index. I know the higher the PR, the more likely they crawl more often and the faster they remove these 404's I guess, but still.
-
Hi again,
Four months seems abnormally long, but it could have something to do with how many 404s are are - 400 is pretty high. Is this number at least going down every few weeks in WMT?
Cheers,
Jane
-
hi Jane, we've solved the cause of these errors more than 4 months ago at this point. There is no path to these urls anymore, but they keep showing up so it takes Google pretty long to clean up. And our estimate is that there about 400 more of these 404 errors so we still have some time to go I guess.
-
Hi,
How long have these errors been appearing since you fixed the issue? It could be a case of Google looking for URLs on the site that it has seen in the past, even though there is no path to them anymore. With the pathway gone, it should stop looking, but I'm curious how long the issue has been fixed for?
-
I hate to speculate on anything involving SEO, but I've always taken those 404s as visits Google has been able to grab data for. If Webmasters is able to catch the data for a visit to a 404, it'll let you know about it.
What lead me to this cringe assumption cringe was how similar those 404s were to existing pages, like someone tried to type in a URL and got it wrong, or deleted some of it and hit "enter".
Take the info for what it's worth, which isn't fact, just an idea to get you rolling.
-
I've had those too and they are quiet annoying (love seeing 0 errors hehe). I just mark and fixed and hope it doesn't show up again (usually stops appearing after doing that once or twice).
If anyone has another other insight into this, please share!
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
-
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
Pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. The page below in search console shows the error above...
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | | RocketStats0 -
Changes to 'links to your site' in WebMaster Tools?
We're writing more out of curiosity... Clicking on "Download latest links" within 'Links to your site' in Google's WebMaster Tools would usually bring back links discovered recently. However, the last few times (for numerous accounts) it has brought back a lot of legacy links - some from 2011 - and includes nothing recent. We would usually expect to see a dozen at least each month. ...Has anyone else noticed this? Or, do you have any advice? Thanks in advance, Ant!
Technical SEO | | AbsoluteDesign0 -
Rel="publisher" validation error in html5
Using HTML5 I am getting a validation error on in my HTML Validation error: Bad value publisher for attribute rel on element link: Not an absolute IRI. The string publisher is not a registered keyword or absolute URL. This just started showing up on Tuesday in validation errors. Never showed up in the past. Has something changed?
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Redirects & 404 Errors
Hi everyone, I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page. I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there... The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well. Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!
Technical SEO | | marisolmarketing0 -
Webmaster tools
Hello, My sites are showing odd "links to your site" data in WMT. Its not showing any links to the homepages and reduced links for other pages. Anyone else seeing this? Penguin refresh maybe?
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
What if 404 Error not possible?
Hi Everyone, I get an 404 error in my page if the URL is simply wrong, but for some parameters, like if a page has been deleted, or has expired, I get an error page indicating that the ID is wrong, but no 404 error. It is for me very difficult to program a function in php that solve the problem and modify the .htaccess with the mod_rewrite. I ask the developer of the system to give a look, but I am not sure if I will get an answer soon. I can control the content of the deleted/expired page, but the URL will be very similar to those that are ok (actually the url could has been fine, but now expired). Thinking of solutions I can set the expired/deleted pages as noindex, would it help to avoid duplicated title/description/content problem? If an user goes to i.e., mywebsite.com/1-article/details.html I can set the head section to noindex if it has expired. Would it be good enough? Other question, is it possible anyhow to set the pages as 404 without having to do it directly in the .htacess, so avoiding the mod_rewrite problems that I am having? Some magical tag in the head section of the page? Many thanks in advance for your help, Best Regards, Daniel
Technical SEO | | te_c0 -
Site links show spam
Hi folks, I'm working on a website that runs on WordPress and was not updated by the owner, this has resulted in a malware injection and now when you search the companies name in Google, the site links appear with words like Viagra, et al. I've seen this a number of times, so I went through the code and have removed all the malware. I presume I now have to wait for Google to recrawl the website and update the site links? Is there anything else I should be doing to speed up the process? Thank you 🙂
Technical SEO | | ChristopherM0