undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Reporting & Analytics
  4. 500 errors and impact on google rankings

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.

500 errors and impact on google rankings

Reporting & Analytics
6
7
7.8k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • ahw
    ahw last edited by Apr 4, 2012, 10:15 AM

    Since the launch of our newly designed website about 6 months ago, we are experiencing a high number of 500 server errors (>2000).

    Attempts to resolve these errors have been unsuccessful to date. We have just started to notice a consistent and sustained drop in rankings despite our hard sought efforts to correct.

    Two questions... can very high levels of 500 errors adversely effect our google rankings?

    And, if this is the case,  what type of specialist (what are they called) has expertise to investigate and fix this issue.

    I should also mention that the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis, which some have stated is due to the size of the site (>500 pages). Don't know if they're part of the same problem?

    Thanks.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • KeriMorgret
      KeriMorgret @gradedstakes last edited by May 28, 2012, 1:48 AM May 28, 2012, 1:48 AM

      Hi Ryan,

      I suggest creating a new Q&A question for your specific question, and include what details you can about the errors you are seeing and the URL of your site, if you can.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • gradedstakes
        gradedstakes last edited by May 27, 2012, 8:34 AM May 27, 2012, 8:34 AM

        I'm having a similar issue. I take it this means that I need to move off Godaddy hosting and use something more advanced? Is this a correct way to resolve the issue?

        KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply May 28, 2012, 1:48 AM Reply Quote 0
        • topic:timeago_earlier,2 months
        • AlanMosley
          AlanMosley last edited by Apr 5, 2012, 1:36 AM Apr 5, 2012, 1:36 AM

          Your sitemap is returning a application/xml content type, this should be text/xml

          and your 500 errors are

          The URI you submitted has disallowed characters

          See more details in email

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ShaMenz
            ShaMenz last edited by Apr 4, 2012, 7:26 PM Apr 4, 2012, 7:26 PM

            Hi ahw,

            A 500 Server Error is generally caused by one of two things:

            1. A hardware error in the server itself
            2. A software error - something in the code which causes the server to barf

            From your description, it sounds like the 500 errors may be appearing intermittently - ie a page is Ok, then errors, then is Ok etc.... This would tend to suggest that the problem is a hardware fault, but it is still possible that it may be caused by random code which is not encountered every time a page is loaded.

            The most reliable way to determine which problem you have is to check whether you are experiencing the 500 errors with a static file - ie an image, video, pdf, xml, css etc. If you are seeing the error with a static file, then the problem is 100% Server hardware fault (or Server misconfiguration, but this should return a permanent 500 Error).

            If "the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis", means that your sitemap also is intermittently returning a 500 Error and it is a static xml file, that may be your clue.

            If yours is a LAMP based system (Apache/Linux) and you have root access to your Server, my boss is a Systems Administrator and able to take a look at it for you, but his gut feeling is that you are looking at a hardware problem. This means your best course of action would be to contact your Hosting provider as soon as possible and ask them to take a look at it.

            Hope that helps,

            Sha

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • josh-riley
              josh-riley last edited by Apr 4, 2012, 12:21 PM Apr 4, 2012, 12:21 PM

              I agree with Alan.

              As for the sitemap, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "goes down on a regular basis" - as in # of pages indexed by Google? And if some of those URLs are part of the 500 error list, then it makes sense that the # of pages Google indexed would go down as if Google can't index a page then it doesn't matter if it's listed in the sitemap as it can't be crawled.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • AlanMosley
                AlanMosley last edited by Apr 4, 2012, 11:18 AM Apr 4, 2012, 11:18 AM

                Yes 500 errors will affect ranking, SE like a site that is well mainated, obviosly they dont want to send users to a error page.

                Can we get a url, I will take a look, and may be able to advice you.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Hannahm24

                  Unsolved Wild fluctuations in ranking, any thoughts on why or what to do about it?

                  ranking issue keyword rankings

                  We have a keyword which is important to us and used to have rock steady rankings for over a decade. Over the past 9 months or so it has been fluctuating all over the place. Jumping up or down 20 places or so overnight. Any thoughts on this behaviour and what we should be doing to stabilise the ranking?Screenshot 2024-05-13 at 09.47.jpg

                  Reporting & Analytics | Jun 13, 2024, 11:59 AM | Hannahm24
                  0
                • Kate_Nadeau

                  What is the difference between "document" and "object" moved redirect errors?

                  redirect chain redirect

                  What is the difference between "document" and "object" moved redirect errors? I'm used to see "object moved" as a redirect chain issue that needs to be fixed, but this week my report contained a "document moved" redirect chain issue. And it's on our homepage. Looks like it might be a HTTP versus an HTTPS issue.

                  Reporting & Analytics | Jun 22, 2022, 8:29 PM | Kate_Nadeau
                  0
                • Johnroger

                  Strange landing page in Google Analytics

                  Hello MOZ Community, The website in question is https://x-y.com/ When i looked at the landing pages report in GA , x-y.com is appended at the end of every URL like this. https://x-y.com/x-y.com When i open the above URL in GA interface, it shows page not found. This is obvious as there is no such URL.
                  The metrics like sessions, Users, Bounce rate all look good. In the property settings, The default URL is written like this http:// cell-gate.com (Please note that s is missing in property settings). But how is traffic tracked correctly How do i solve this problem. What settings should we change to make the landing pages report look ok Thanks

                  Reporting & Analytics | Dec 1, 2019, 5:05 AM | Johnroger
                  0
                • carl_daedricdigital

                  Getting google impressions for a site not in the index...

                  Hi all Wondering if i could pick the brains of those wise than myself... my client has an https website with tons of pages indexed and all ranking well, however somehow they managed to also set their server up so that non https versions of the pages were getting indexed and thus we had the same page indexed twice in the engine but on slightly different urls (it uses a cms so all the internal links are relative too). The non https is mainly used as a dev testing environment. Upon seeing this we did a google remove request in WMT, and added noindex in the robots and that saw the index pages drop over night. See image 1. However, the site still appears to getting return for a couple of 100 searches a day! The main site gets about 25,000 impressions so it's way down but i'm puzzled as to how a site which has been blocked can appear for that many searches and if we are still liable for duplicate content issues. Any thoughts are most welcome. Sorry, I am unable to share the site name i'm afraid. Client is very strict on this. Thanks, Carl image1.png

                  Reporting & Analytics | Aug 15, 2014, 10:19 AM | carl_daedricdigital
                  0
                • ccgale

                  Easiest way to get out of Google local results?

                  Odd one this, but what's the easiest way to remove a website from the Google local listings? Would removing all the Google map listings do the job? A client of ours is suffering massively since the Google update in the middle of last month. Previously they would appear no1 or no2 in the local results and normally 1 or 2 in the organic results. However, since the middle of last month any time they rank on the first page for a local result, their organic result has dropped massively to at least page 4. If I set my location as something different in google, say 100 miles away, they then rank well for the organic listings (obviously not appearing for local searches). When I change it back to my current location the organic listing is gone and they are back to ranking for the local. Since the middle of July the traffic from search engines has dropped about 65%. All the organic rankings remain as strong as ever just not in the areas where they want to get customers from!! The idea is to remove the local listing and get the organics reranking as the ctr on those is much much higher. On a side note, anyone else notice very poor ctr on google local listings? Maybe users feel they are adverts thanks

                  Reporting & Analytics | Aug 7, 2012, 5:04 PM | ccgale
                  0
                • endlessrange

                  What is s.ytimg.com in google analytics?

                  My clients GA reports 273 visits from s.ytimg.com.  I go to the site, it doesn't exist. I googled it, there were some code with s.ytimg.com in it, but nothing I could understand. Anybody have an idea where this comes from?

                  Reporting & Analytics | Jul 24, 2012, 10:15 AM | endlessrange
                  0
                • daracreative

                  Setting Up Google Analytic with Sub Folder Sites

                  What is the best way of setting up Google Analytic for a website that has many sub folders? The main site is example.com and it has 40 sub folder sites like example.com/uk example.com/France etc etc Would it be advised to track a single domain in Google Analytic then create filters for the sub folder sites. Filters > Include traffic from > Sub directories Also with this method is it possible to view overall incoming website stats for everything? Previous experience would be great with this thanks 🙂

                  Reporting & Analytics | Apr 2, 2012, 8:43 PM | daracreative
                  0
                • CeCeBar

                  Setting up Google Analytics default URL

                  If someone has set: the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com) then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website... ... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com). How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address? Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file? _Cindy

                  Reporting & Analytics | Jan 19, 2012, 4:17 PM | CeCeBar
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.