Google crawl index issue with our website...
-
Hey there. We've run into a mystifying issue with Google's crawl index of one of our sites. When we do a "site:www.burlingtonmortgage.biz" search in Google, we're seeing lots of 404 Errors on pages that don't exist on our site or seemingly on the remote server.
In the search results, Google is showing nonsensical folders off the root domain and then the actual page is within that non-existent folder.
An example:
Google shows this in its index of the site (as a 404 Error page): www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/MQnjO/idaho-mortgage-rates.asp
The actual page on the site is: www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/idaho-mortgage-rates.asp
Google is showing the folder MQnjO that doesn't exist anywhere on the remote. Other pages they are showing have different folder names that are just as wacky.
We called our hosting company who said the problem isn't coming from them...
Has anyone had something like this happen to them?
Thanks so much for your insight!
Megan -
Hi Keri. Thanks for following up. This turned out to be an issue with an auto-generated breadcrumbs script. I don't know what the intricacies of that were but we were able to remove it and get this issue straightened out.
Thanks again!
Megan
-
Hi Megan,
I'm following up on older questions that are marked unanswered. Did you ever get this figured out?
-
Megan ,
Please check with your hosting company,
about this code to be included in htaccess
ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml
/404.shtml its your 404 page
-
Thanks for your help on this Wissam. Is this something that we need to have the hosting company set-up on the server to ensure that these pages get returned as 404s?
-
Megan,
See here
http://markup.io/v/fyd9w4w9wmjr
Googlebot when It crawls this page, you remote server is telling Google Bot that its a Live page and this page Exists
The solution to the upper problem, might help you in fixing the actual problem.
If the Pages with the mystery folder Does not Exist .. your remote server should show google bot a 404 not found (http header).
-
Are we talking about one problem or two?
http://www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/contact.htm does not exist on the remote server (as it was removed over a year ago). I see that there are similar errors for other old pages which were also previously removed. Should we have redirected those to the 404 page since there are not related pages on the existing site?
I am not sure if the two problems have anything to do with one another. The pages with the "mystery folders" are existing pages. They just exist in the root. Why would google be looking at them as if they are inside sub folder?
-
Megan,
noticed something also for example this page http://www.burlingtonmortgage.biz/contact.htm . its showing a 404 error from title and content ... but the HTTP header is showing 200 ok. u need to fix that.
and would assume maybe thats why google started indexing weird URLs generating from your site... and if its true is a 404 page ..google is not picking it up because its showing its a Live page (200ok)
-
We use Dreamweaver.
-
Which CMS are you using?
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
-
Google is still indexing the old domain a year after 301 redirects are put in place
Hi there, You might have experienced this before but for me this is the first. A client of mine moved from domain A (www.domainA.com) to domain B (www.domainB.com). 301 redirects are all in place for over a year. But the old domain is still showing in Google when you search for "site:domainA.com" The HTTP Header check shows this result for the URL https://www.domainA.com/company/cookie-policy.aspx HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Technical SEO | | iQi
Cache-Control => private
Content-Length => 174
Content-Type => text/html; charset=utf-8
Location => https://www.domain_B_.com/legal/cookie-policy
Server => Microsoft-IIS/10.0
X-AspNetMvc-Version => 5.2
X-AspNet-Version => 4.0.30319
X-Powered-By => ASP.NET
Date => Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:01:33 GMT
Connection => close Does the redirect look wrong? The change of address request was made on Google Console when the website was moved over a year ago. Edit: Checked the domainA.com on bing and it seems that its not indexed, and replaced with domainB.com, which is the right. Just Google is indexing the old domain! Please let me know your thoughts on why this is happening. Best,0 -
Why would Google not index all submitted pages?
On Google Search console we see that many of our submitted pages weren't indexed. What could be the reasons? | Web pages |
Technical SEO | | Leagoldberger
| 130,030 Submitted |
| 87,462 Indexed |0 -
I am Using Wix website creator. Will google be able to read the javascript?
I tried using some of the moz tools like the "on page grader" and it was not able to read any of the writing on my webpage because wix uses javascript. Will this impact my rankings on google compared to my competitors? The New Wix websites allow you to build a website in HTML. Should I switch to this? Thanks, Jonathan
Technical SEO | | H1_Marketing_Solutions0 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Example of Google Indexing my Feedburner Links
As you can see, there are 2 results for the same page. One is the correct page URL, the other has the Feedburner parameters at the end: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/improving-user-engagement-with-the-right-blog-commenting-system.html http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/improving-user-engagement-with-the-right-blog-commenting-system.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Can this cause duplicate content issues? Can I prevent Google from indexing my Feedburner links? My Feedburner settings are already set to noindex, what else can I do?!? 22cfThX.png
Technical SEO | | sbrault740 -
Http VS https and google crawl and indexing ?
Is it true that https pages are not crawled and indexed by Google and other search engines as well as http pages?
Technical SEO | | sherohass0 -
When is the last time Google crawled my site
How do I tell the last time Google crawled my site. I found out it is not the "Cache" which I had thought it was.
Technical SEO | | digitalops0 -
Crawl issues/ .htacess issues
My site is getting crawl errors inside of google webmaster tools. Google believe a lot of my links point to index.html when they really do not. That is not the problem though, its that google can't give credit for those links to any of my pages. I know I need to create a rule in the .htacess but the last time I did it I got an error. I need some assistance on how to go about doing this, I really don't want to lose the weight of my links. Thanks
Technical SEO | | automart0