Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why are Seemingly Randomly Generated URLs Appearing as Errors in Google Webmaster Tools?
-
I've been confused by some URLs that are showing up as errors in our GWT account. They seem to just be randomly generated alphanumeric strings that Google is reporting as 404 errors. The pages do 404 because nothing ever existed there or was linked to. Here are some examples that are just off of our root domain:
/JEzjLs2wBR0D6wILPy0RCkM/WFRnUK9JrDyRoVCnR8=
/MevaBpcKoXnbHJpoTI5P42QPmQpjEPBlYffwY8Mc5I=
/YAKM15iU846X/ymikGEPsdq 26PUoIYSwfb8 FBh34=
I haven't been able to track down these character strings in any internet index or anywhere in our source code so I have no idea why Google is reporting them.
We've been pretty vigilant lately about duplicate content and thin content issues and my concern is that there are an unspecified number of urls like this that Google thinks exist but don't really.
Has anyone else seen GWT reporting errors like this for their site? Does anyone have any clue why Google would report them as errors?
-
Glad to hear you located the root cause of the issue.
-
Update: I think I found the source of the errors. We have a form submission box on every page of our site and there are random alphanumeric strings that are unique to every page that look like these urls that Google is reporting as errors. Maybe Google is trying to use our form submission tool.
It's still really odd that Google would think they are urls and report them as errors since they appear in an tag not an <a> tag</a>
<a>```
<input id="authenticity_token" name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="ElCkBCszxMddaqVyVIx+flkzRlM9xb7mHb3cFISlJvY=" /> -
The next step would be to check Google WMT > Diagnostics > Crawl errors > Not Found tab
Click the "Linked from Detected" text. That will show the source of the link.
-
That's not the case. We have an in house content system and no shopping cart. These urls return a 404 error and always have because they've never existed.
No crawlers have returned urls that look like this either. I can't get these urls to show up in Google's index either.
-
Hi Jimmy,
My bet is you are using a CMS or Shopping Cart on your site. The software is generating these seemingly random URLs, and the Google crawler is seeing them.
Crawlers don't move through your site the way people do. If you take your home page and right-click, then choose View Page Source, you will find many URLs. The crawler will then follow each and every URL throughout your site. The URLs you are seeing could be generated on any given page.
To track the issue, use the SEOmoz crawler on your site, then analyze the results. When you find these types of URLs, take note of the page they are located on.
Alternatively, you can contact your CMS or shopping cart's software developer and inquire about the URLs. If these URLs show a folder path before the random characters, that information can help track down which pages or software is generating these pages.
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
-
Vanity URL vs domain URL
Hi guys, Our CEO is having an interview with a known broadcaster on radio. During the interview he will mention a specific URL www.example.com/marketingcampaign that we want track on Google Analytics, therefore behaving like a vanity URL redirecting to the actual URL www.example.com/resources/primary-keyword-2018. Would this work the same way a vanity URL in terms of tracking or not such as following guideline here ? I am asking because vanity URLs are supposed to be completely different domain name that gets purchased and in our case it is the same domain name just with a different URI. thanks guys!
Reporting & Analytics | | Taysir0 -
Why google stubbornly keeps indexing my http urls instead of the https ones?
I moved everything to https in November, but there are plenty of pages which are still indexed by google as http instead of https, and I am wondering why. Example: http://www.gomme-auto.it/pneumatici/barum correctly redirect permanently to https://www.gomme-auto.it/pneumatici/barum Nevertheless if you search for pneumatici barum: https://www.google.it/search?q=pneumatici+barum&oq=pneumatici+barum The third organic result listed is still http. Since we moved to https google crawler visited that page tens of time, last one two days ago. But doesn't seems to care to update the protocol in google index. Anyone knows why? My concern is when I use API like semrush and ahrefs I have to do it twice to try both http and https, for a total of around 65k urls I waste a lot of my quota.
Reporting & Analytics | | max.favilli0 -
How can I track my rankings on Google Images?
I noticed a small amount of traffic coming from a particular very generic keyword. Being pleasantly surprised that we are ranking for this, and after some digging, I found that we are actually ranking in Google images, rather than in the web results. How can I track whether other keywords are ranking in Google images? I use Rank Checker to track keywords in the main web results, but this doesn't have a function for Google Images. Help please - thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | TheJewelleryEd0 -
Google Analytics shows most referrers as "Direct" -- What are some better tools?
Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful. Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic? Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.) Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Brand_Psychic0 -
Sudden Increase In Number of Pages Indexed By Google Webmaster When No New Pages Added
Greetings MOZ Community: On June 14th Google Webmaster tools indicated an increase in the number of indexed pages, going from 676 to 851 pages. New pages had been added to the domain in the previous month. The number of pages blocked by robots increased at that time from 332 (June 1st) to 551 June 22nd), yet the number of indexed pages still increased to 851. The following changes occurred between June 5th and June 15th: -A new redesigned version of the site was launched on June 4th, with some links to social media and blog removed on some pages, but with no new URLs added. The design platform was and is Wordpress. -Google GTM code was added to the site. -An exception was made by our hosting company to ModSecurity on our server (for i-frames) to allow GTM to function. In the last ten days my web traffic has decline about 15%, however the quality of traffic has declined enormously and the number of new inquiries we get is off by around 65%. Click through rates have declined from about 2.55 pages to about 2 pages. Obviously this is not a good situation. My SEO provider, a reputable firm endorsed by MOZ, believes the extra 175 pages indexed by Google, pages that do not offer much content, may be causing the ranking decline. My developer is examining the issue. They think there may be some tie in with the installation of GTM. They are noticing an additional issue, the sites Contact Us form will not work if the GTM script is enabled. They find it curious that both issues occurred around the same time. Our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader. Does anyone have any idea why these extra pages are appearing and how they can be removed? Anyone have experience with GTM causing issues with this? Thanks everyone!!!
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan1
Alan1 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Google Analytics - Keywords (not set) or ( not provided) WHY???
In Analytics, most of my visitors are landing on my home page, but when trying to see wich keywords they use, most of them are: (not set) or ( not provided) See screencast: http://screencast.com/t/AKwPW76qLVsN Can you tell why? What is going on? Is there a way to solve this? Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
How do you set www vs non-www in Bing Webmaster Tools?
A site of mine is showing as example.com instead of www.example.com in Bing and Yahoo. I know where to set the preferred domain to www in Google Webmaster Tools, but I can't seem to find that function in Bing Webmaster Tools. Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Reporting & Analytics | | DentalPlanSEO0